LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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NAZARETH against NICE, 



IMPARTIAL REVIEW OF THE 

THEIR CREEDS AND PRINCIPLES, 



FROM THE 



STMD- POINT OF THE WRITTEN WORD OF GOD. 



BY ICONOCLAST. 



yWC 






"This is life eternal, that they might know thee, 
O Father, — the only true God, — and, Jesus 
Christ whom thou has sent." 
<S\ John's Gospel, ij: j. 

"To us (the Christian Church) there is but One 
^/^. God, the Father; and One Lord, Jesus Christ." 

Paul's isl to Corinthians, 8:6. 

"The knowledge of the truth, For there is One 
God, and One Mediator between God and men, 
the Man Christ Jesus." 

Paul's ist to Timothy, 2:4 and 5. 

"A Second Reformation, and it must be an extensive one, remains 
to be attempted and achieved by our sons, such as shall bring the 
Church home to its resting place upon the foundation of the Apostles 
and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone." 

Isaac Taylor. 

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 

Christ. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

1887. 



( n Jul 5 1887 >Y 



^'° 1 






Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1SS7, by Henry Hardy, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 





lliomi.t-: Mrdill .1' I <i.. 

Printers and Stcreotypcrg, 
Washington, B.C. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The object of the following pages is to place the general 
reader — usually not well furnished with time and opportunity for 
controversial inquiry — in a position to judge intelligently con- 
cerning the doctrines and opinions of the leading churches or 
sects of Christendom, and thus, measurably at least, to ascertain 
the merits or demerits of each in particular. 

Nothing is more sure than that there is not a church existing, 
any more than an individual, without some, and occasionally, 
grievous faults. If, in Apostolic days and the Seven Churches 
of Asia there was no little to reprove, who will presume that 
among the warring sects of these less favored times there is not 
much that demands a fearless and healthy scrutiny ? From faults 
and blemishes all churches and all men are in duty bound to seek 
to be as free as possible, yet, great is the pity, the too common 
habit is not merely to extenuate or excuse errors but to elevate 
them into merits. In this way, religion, the great purifier, is made 
to miss its quality as a curative of the spiritual and moral disorders 
of the human race. God's boundless and unceasing mercies are, 
however, always at hand to provide in His Holy Word both balm 
and physician for even this sad situation. Thither we must repair, 
and thereunto, in every difficulty and doubt, apply, with a faith- 
ful exercise of our God-given faculties, without fear, favor or 
affection for whatever, is mortal or earthly. The truth as it is in 
Jesus, which comprehends the earlier truth of Moses and the 
Prophets, is the one criterion of these pages. Their humble 
author calls no man that is or ever was upon the earth his spiritual 
Father : he calls no man spiritual Master save the one Master 
from whom all Christians derive their honored name. He there- 
fore gratefully rejoices in that liberty wherewith Christ has made 
his people free. On those like-minded, grace, mercy and peace 
from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour, are 
fraternally invoked. . 



CONTENTS. 



Ambrose 5S 

Anselm 68 

Apostle John 24 

Arius 44 

Calvin, John 106 

Castalio 109 

Christ, sinless 50 

Church, Baptist 125 

R. Catholic 5 

Congregationalist 68 

Disciples of Christ.... 63 

Episcopal of England. 7 

Episcopal of U. S 8 

Jewish 143 

Lutheran 117 

Methodist 165 

Presbyterian 96 

Unitarian 183 

Universalist 176 

Confession, Westminster 97 



Consubstantiation 119 

Creed, Apostles' 40 

Creed, Nicene 41 

Emperor Coustantine 43 

Emperor Theodosius 57 

Fathers, Early 59 

Impanatiou 1 20 

Incarnation 27 

Knox, John 114 

Leeser, Rabbi 150, 159 

Logos, The 24 

Massacre, St. Bartholomew 116 

Milton, John 101 

Xeander to 

Servetus 112 

Theophilus 76 

Webster, Daniel 9 

Whately, Dr 65 

Wise, Dr. I. M 159 

Zwingli, Ulric 121 



(4) 



NAZARETH against NICE. 



THE Church of Rome, commonly called the Roman- 
Catholic, whereby it stands distinguished from the 
Greek Catholic Church — likewise "so-called " — is the oldest 
church organization west of the Atlantic Ocean. It claims 
to date its origin from the alleged presence of Peter, the 
chief or leader of Christ's Apostles, in the ancient City of 
Rome, after a round of services in his apostolical capacity 
in Samaria, in Syria, throughout Palestine and back as far 
as the country of the Euphrates. But the New Testament 
makes no record of this alleged Peter's visit to Rome as it 
does of Paul's residence in that capital by reason of a special 
mission from above. If Peter really visited Rome it must 
have been very near the close of his earthly career ; and as 
to his Roman bishopric, fond assumption is most probably 
its sole basis. Had the claim been made for Paul instead 
of Peter there would have been color in it ; but however 
the fact might be, inasmuch as it holds no place in the 
Divine Records, it can have no religious significance 
whatsoever. 

As a question of practical interest to accountable beings 
it matters not by what means, right or wrong, designed or 
fortuitous, the great fabric of Romish hierarchical supremacy 
was reared or maintained. What does the Roman Church 
teach to-day ? is the real consideration now before us. 

The system of the Roman Catholic Church is synonymous 
with the Papacy, because the Papa, or Pope, too readily 
-styled by the votaries of that church the " Holy Father," 
is the central figure and pivot on which the whole fabric 
turns. The Pope is also known by the title of Supreme 
Pontiff, a word drawn from profane history and designating 
the office of Chief Priest in Pagan Rome. No Roman 
Catholic will hesitate about calling the Pope his ' ' Holy 
Father," or will question for a single instant his supreme 
spiritual authority. The system is saturated with this 
unlawful homage or worship, so as to make it patent upon 
its forehead and name, and not to be possibly gainsayed or 
mistaken. But how does all this comport with the teachings 
and commands of the Word of God ? 

We read in the Gospel of Matthew (23:9) the pointed 



6 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

command of Christ to his disciples, "Call no man your 
Father upon the earth : for one is your Father who is in 
heaven." Here is a direct prohibition by the Lord and 
Master of Christians forbidding precisely that practice which 
is habitual with every individual member of the Romish 
clergy and laity, and which is, moreover, blindly supposed 
by millions of them to be an act of acceptable service ! 
Could such be possible were the reading and study of the 
Word of God enjoined upon those people as a duty and a 
privilege ? Perhaps not one in ten thousand entertains the 
smallest notion that such a prohibitory command anywhere 
exists. How, indeed, should they know, when the study 
of the Bible is the reverse of encouraged among them ? 

The circumstance must be regarded as very significant 
that a vast organization, claiming to be the sole Christian 
Church, should be designated by themselves and others 
by that one single word which proclaims them flagrant 
transgressors of Christ's positive command! But for all 
others, where the warning is so instant and plain, only the 
wilfully blind can be led astray. 

If we follow onward from the great text above quoted, 
we shall alight upon a kindred ordinance of the Saviour 
with which the Romish system, with its infinity of hu- 
man doctors and teachers, of decrees and dogmas, is in 
naked antagonism. " One is your Master, namely, Christ; 
and all ye are brethren;" not popes, fathers, prelates, 
cardinals or priests, but " brethren." 

It is because these great and explicit injunctions of the 
Son of God have been ignored that a thousand fallacies and 
delusive doctrines and practices have dishonored the relig- 
ious history of about 1500 years. We cannot recount them 
all, but may ask, in the words of a man of great insight and 
wisdom, "What have we y with the New Testament in our 
hands, to do with a vast medley of superstitions, such as 
the 'tremendous sacrifice ' of the Mass; the adoration of the 
Mother of God; prayers for the dead or prayers to them; or 
the intercession of saints; or the seven sacraments; or holy 
water, holy oil, holy vestments, and crossing of the fore- 
head; the worship of images, pictures, and relics; penance, 
purgatory, or auricular confession ; indulgences or works of 
supererogation; monkery and celibacy and lying miracles? 
The modern Christian, Bible in hand, throws off these 
follies and abominations as a man would rend from his 
shoulders a fool's chequered coat that had been forced 
upon him." 

No two systems of doctrine and practice could be more 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 7 

mutually repugnant than the system of Peter as developed 
in his Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles and the system 
of the Roman Catholic Church. That church has about 
the same right and title to claim Simon Peter for its patron 
that the Czar of Russia would have if he were to claim that 
the opinions and writings of Thomas Jefferson furnish 
the basis and j ustification for his (the Czar's) arbitrary des- 
potism. 



One of the principal results of the great disruption that 
took place about the time of the Lutheran reformation was 
the formation of The English National Church under 
peculiar circumstances. Mixed up with a popular and 
genuine indignation at the rapacity and corruptions of the 
Papal hierarchy and a desire to be rid of them, were the 
personal purposes of the headstrong and wayward English 
king, Henry the Eighth, who would suffer no restraint upon 
his ebullient passions and desires, even in their wildest 
moods. His marriage to six wives ; the divorce of two of 
them and murder of two, with executions, by the scaffold 
and the fagot, often of the cruellest description, and in 
numbers perhaps exceeding the average of a hundred a 
month during his long reign of thirty-eight years, for the 
most part in punishment of heresy and misbelief only of 
doctrines and dogmas of the pedant king's own propound- 
ing, will give some distant idea of the works and ways of 
this royal monster, who was said never to spare man in his 
anger or woman in his lust. 

Doubtless the Tudor dynasty, to which Henry belonged, 
were a bloody race, but so also bloody were the times in 
which they reigned, from which it is only equitable that 
the times should bear their due share of our modern detes- 
tation as well as pity. King Edward the Sixth, the gentle 
son and youthful successor of the sanguinary Henry, spilled 
human blood in some unnecessary instances, and his royal 
sister, the Bloody Mary, deluged England with Protestant 
gore. Elizabeth, great and distinguished for many qualities 
that became a ruler, followed in the family track, yet with 
fewer instances of barbarous cruelty ; but under her the 
secular power asserted its claim to supervise and control 
the " Estate ecclesiastical and spiritual," thus confirming 
an innovation of her father's which has ever since caused 
scandalous comment and disapproval at home and abroad. 
With varying fortunes in the reigns of the Stuarts, James 



8 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

the First ; Charles the First ; the Protector Cromwell ; 
Charles the Second and James the Second, down to the 
Revolution under William the Third, the two antagonistic 
Papal and Protestant parties were alternately up and 
down ; but finally, the Protestant interest prevailed, 
subject to the domination, as just remarked, of the state 
authority, which continues to this day operative in Eng- 
land and Wales, but not in Scotland or Ireland, or' the 
several British colonies. 

In looking back upon the rugged ages through which 
Christian ideas and principles were struggling with worldly 
aims and desires, it will be the part of a cautious wisdom to 
note the reformatory work that was to be done, and to con- 
sider the only agencies sufficient to perform it. To break 
up the firm-set sod that had been depositing and hardening 
for centuries, required no superficial or dainty manipula- 
tion, but bold and resolute force exerted in thorough earnest. 
Henry the Eighth was such a rough and sturdy ploughman, 
and Martin Luther, it will be remembered, would not have 
been the right man in the right place with a spirit and 
temper only pliant and smooth. The exigency provided 
the men. 

William and Mary's accession to the English throne, with 
William's military successes in Ireland over the forces of 
the ex-king James the Second, confirmed the Protestantism 
of the English church as by law established, having the 
sovereign for its spiritual head. Its theology is displayed in 
thirty-nine Articles, reduced from forty-two, but which the 
Episcopal church of the United States has of late further 
reduced to thirty-five "Articles of Religion." Some of 
these Articles we propose candidly to consider. 

The First Article is in the words following: "There is 
but One living and true God, everlasting, without body, 
parts or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; 
the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and 
invisible. And in unity of this godhead there be three 
persons of one substance, power and eternity: the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. ' ' 

This first article consists of two sections or clauses, each 
inconsistent with the other. The former section teaches 
monotheism ; the latter Tritheism ; but neither of them the 
Trinity, though the caption to the article calls for it. To 
the former every true Christian, Jew, and Mohammedan will 
yield a ready assent, because it declares " there is but one 
living and true God, without body or parts, ' ' and therefore 
sole and indivisible, a veritable unity. The latter sentence 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 9 

Tather furtively substitutes "godhead" for "God" — two 
words by no means synonymous or equivalent, for under a 
"unity of godhead" innumerable individuals might be 
comprised as well as only three, "godhead" not being 
like "God," a strictly singular and personal name, but a 
neuter noun of multitude. So the idolatrous Hindoos 
"allege that the three hundred and thirty millions of gods, 
■whom they enumerate, are subordinate agents, assuming 
various offices in preserving the harmony of the universe 
under One godhead, as innumerable rays issue from one 
.sun." So thought Dr. Isaac Watts when lie sang of the 

"Counsels of peace between th' Almighty Three, 
Conceived at once and signed without debate 
In perfect union of the Eternal Mind." 

Thus the latter part of the first article inculcates Trithe- 
ism, a form of belief which, however unfounded in fact and 
Scripture, is not illogical, and but slightly violates the 
laws of language or of the mind. 

Not so the ' ' Trinity ' ' proper, which the article by its 
heading professes but fails really to teach, because it has 
no existence anywhere ; neither in heaven, nor in earth, 
nor in the mere imagination. There may indeed be col- 
locations of words arbitrarily set together by uninspired 
.and therefore unauthorized men, such as are written in the 
so*called Athanasian creed, and are supposed by some to 
describe the Trinity ; but when an intelligible explanation 
of them is asked, the would-be instructor invariably re- 
treats behind the screen of "mystery," declaring the 
Trinity not a doctrine to be examined by analysis but to 
he implicitly taken as a whole. 

Monotheism is intelligible ; Tritheism is intelligible ; but 
the Trinity, which is nothing other than a vain effort to 
combine or compromise with the other two, is wholly unin- 
telligible and incomprehensible, and has been so confessed 
t>y not a few of its votaries. I find a story, and it might 
be a true one, appended with something of triumph to an 
argument for the Trinity. It is about as follows : The 
distinguished statesman, the late Daniel Webster, was one 
•day leaving an Episcopal Church, when he was accosted by 
an acquaintance thus : "Then you attend that church?" 
"Sometimes," answered Mr. Webster. "So you believe 
that three and one are the same thing?" again queried 
the acquaintance. "I believe, sir," replied Mr. Webster, 
"that neither you nor I understand the arithmetic of 
heaven." 

Whilst we cannot but admire the dexterity of Mr. Web- 



IO NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

ster in thus answering impertinence with a puzzle, lie 
plainly said nothing that could help the Trinity, for if the 
language in which the commands of heaven are couched 
is to mean something else than the just human interpreta- 
tion of it, the Bible thereby becomes a mass of insoluble 
riddles. Especially would this be the case with numbers. 
If, for instance, the six days in which God created the 
heavens and the earth mean not six but some other num- 
ber, then the Sabbath was not appointed for the seventh 
day, as Jews and Christians have always supposed. So the 
tribes of Israel were some other than twelve, and the 
Apostles, though each one is separately named, might 
have been of any number more or less' than what we call 
the "twelve. " We may be sure that Mr. Webster intended 
nothing more serious by his shrewd reply than a well-bred 
rebuke to over-intrusiveness. The solemnity with which 
the little circumstance was introduced into a theological 
discussion shows, however, the extreme paucity of weighty 
arguments for the doctrine of the Trinity. 

The distinguished historian of the Christian church, 
Augustus Neander, in treating of the doctrine of the 
Trinity, honestly confesses, Nicenist as he was, that "the 
doctrine of the Trinity does not strictly belong to the 
fundamental articles of the Christian faith, as appears 
sufficiently evident from the fact that it is expressly held 
forth in no one particular passage of the New Testament, 
for the only one in which this is done, — the passage relat- 
ing to the three that bear record (ist John 5:7) — is un- 
doubtedly spurious, and in its ungenuine shape testifies to 
the fact how foreign such a collocation is from the style 
of the New Testament." 

It is scarcely less than solecistic to speak of the Trinity, 
or the doctrine of the Trinity, in the singular number. 
Sometimes singular, sometimes plural, it is characterized 
by ambiguity. The conceptions about the Trinity, or the 
"doctrines" of it, are about as numerous as the planets 
in our system. The bishops and learned doctors of the 
English Episcopal Church profess this, that, or the other 
theory as each one's notion might determine. Thus, Dr. 
John Wallis, profound as a mathematician, took the Sabel- 
lian view, or, as it is called, The Modal Scheme, which 
" represents the Father as the sole person, and the Son and 
Spirit as attributes, or emanations from Him. It compares 
the divinity to the sun, of which the Father would be 
analogous to the substance, the Son to the light, and the 
Holy Ghost to the heat. " This conies near monotheism. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. II 

It is supposed that Archbishop Tillotson was of this way 
of thinking. 

Not very different from this in effect is Bishop John 
Pearson's idea. He regards the Father as the fountain of 
deity and the centre of its attributes, which are communi- 
cated with fulness to Christ and the Holy Ghost. He says 
"there can be but One person originally of himself sub- 
sisting in that Infinite Being, because a plurality of more 
persons so subsisting would necessarily infer a multiplicity 
of Gods. ' ' Bishop George Bull, perhaps, thought this way. 
Dr. Thomas Burnet supposed the Father to be self-existent, 
the Son and Spirit dependent on the Father, yet so that the 
Father's perfections are theirs also, constituting them divine 
and proper objects of worship. Dr. Robert South insisted 
that there was but one infinite, eternal mind, and three 
somewhats, not distinct intelligences, but called by different 
names, as modes, faculties, &c. He engaged in controversy 
with Dr, William Sherlock, dean of St. Paul's, whose opinion 
was that each of the three persons in the Trinity is distinct 
from the others and each a god, but that the three have a 
common consciousness, so that each one has the same attri- 
butes as the other two unitedly. This controversy was 
settled in favor of neither, but brought upon both the charge 
of heresy in daring to attempt to explain an inexplicable 
mystery. Dr. Thomas Burgess, bishop of St. David's, (a 
stout stickler, by the way, for the interpolated verse ist 
John, 5:7,) supposes the three divine persons to constitute 
One God, but that the three persons are not three beings, 
but only one being, because there cannot be more than one 
omnipresent Being ; therefore the three are not severally 
but jointly omnipresent, and so One God. Dr. Daniel 
Waterland, who held several church preferments and was 
an ardent controversialist, kept closely to the Athanasian 
creed — that the Trinity consists of three distinct and equal 
persons, each uncreate, incomprehensible, eternal, almighty, 
each God and Lord, yet together only One God and One L-ord. 
Still there is discrepancy; for the Fatheris said to be neither 
made nor created nor begotten ; the Son, though neither 
made nor created, is begotten ; and the Holy Ghost, neither 
made nor created nor begotten, is ' ' proceeding. ' ' This creed 
amounts to no more than a bold effort to reconcile the essen- 
tial differences of monotheism and tritheism by sheer stress 
of robust assertion. Vox et preterea nihil. 

There is a theory advocated by Rev. John Howe, that the 
Trinity consists of three persons severally possessing all the 
attributes of deity, yet so united as to be One God, as the 



T2 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

bodily, sensitive, and mental faculties are united in a single 
man. The justly renowned Richard Baxter was not well 
inclined to make definition of the Trinity, but thought the 
three divine persons to be wisdom, power, and love, as in 
man there may be three faculties of vital power, intellect, 
and will ; or in the sun, motion, light, and heat. Francis 
Gastrell, bishop of Chester, believed the three names of the 
persons in the Trinity to indicate a three-fold distinction in 
the divine nature, yet not inconsistent with its essential 
unity. He is quoted as saying that ' ' each of the names 
includes the whole idea of God and something more. So 
far as they express the nature of God they all adequately 
and exactly signify the same. It is the additional signifi- 
cation which makes all the distinction between them." 
What those several somethings are, and what they amount 
to when aggregated, must be equal to nothing, because the 
three persons when united are not supposed to be more than 
One God. What is something before union becomes nothing 
when multiplied by three at the instant of union. 

It will be seen, then, that when anybody speaks about 
the Trinity and desires to be rightly understood, he should 
indicate which of the several doctrines, or theories, he 
alludes to. 

A number of years ago a series of sermons were preached 
in the city of Boston by ministers of different denomina- 
tions, each "plainly declaring why he is compelled to 
liold and teach his creed." The Methodist declared his 
"belief in the existence of One God, and that he is clearly- 
revealed to us in the Bible under a three-fold distinction 
or personality — the Father, Son and Holy Ghost." He 
made no attempt to demonstrate the alleged clearness of 
the "revelation ;" but taught under a considerably obscure 
phraseology that there are three persons in the One God, 
that is to say, three persons in One person, because the 
word "God" is unipersonal. He did not avail himself 
of the usual resort to the word "godhead," which is a 
word of multitude similar to company or partnership, and 
may include within it three, or thirty, or three millions, 
or any number of objects whatsoever. His statement was 
therefore self-contradictory as well as scripturally unsus- 
tained. 

The Baptist minister "insisted upon the essential unity 
of God, but not so as to reject the Trinitarian doctrine." 
This, at least, showed a disposition to be accommodating. 
He did not undertake to explain how an "essential unity" 
(whatever that might be) could comport with an actual 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. I $ 

triplicity of contained yet separate units, each unit beings 
distinct from and in every respect equal to each of the 
others. He then went on to say, as if inwardly acknowl- 
edging the unsatisfactoriness of his statement, that his 
church "placed no stress whatever upon the numerical 
idea, because we do not believe that God can be measured 
by any human arithmetic," for which last idea he was 
most probably indebted to Mr. Webster. But in saying 
and doing thus, the minister and his church, however 
strong they might feel under Mr. Webster's backing, hap- 
pen to differ very widely with Moses and the Prophets and. 
with Christ and his Apostles, for in every instance in which 
those great teachers gave pointed instruction, or doctrine, 
concerning the being and manner of being of the Most 
High, the number One is solely and with "stress" set 
forth as descriptive thereof. How thoroughly the unit 
principle pervades all the great and distinguishing features 
of the Christian religion can be readily judged from Paul's 
comprehensive account of it in Ephesians 4:3 to 6, ending 
with "One God and Father of all, who is above all, and 
through all and in you all. ' ' Throughout the New Testa- 
ment the "One God" is also designated, as if to obviate 
all misapprehension and mistake, "the Father." 

The Trinitarian Congregationalist Minister summarily 
excludes all from the name of Christian who do not ' ' pay 
divine honors to Jesus Christ ; ' ' who do not ' ' pray ' ' to him 
and ' ' render him divine worship. ' ' Such proscribed parties, 
he says, are not ' ' evangelical ' ' and not ' ' Christian. ' ' 

Notwithstanding, may we meekly and respectfully dare 
to call into question these stern disparagements, and ask an 
appeal from them to the ' ' law and the testimony ' ' ? 

Where in the whole Bible can a command be found " tx> 
pay divine honors to Jesus Christ, ' ' that is to say, honors 
as to God? A sincere, hearty and practical obedience to 
Christ's commands, as being primarily the commands of 
God, is everywhere enjoined, but ' ' divine honors ' ' nowhere. 
L,et us place ourselves in the presence of Christ himself. 
At the well of Sychar, Christ taught (John 4:21 to 24) the 
worship of the Father, for that the ' ' true worshippers 
worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father 
seeketh such to worship Him." If some other besides the 
Father, Christ himself, to wit, was entitled to the " divine 
honor ' ' of supreme worship, why did Christ keep silence 
when he should have spoken out ? If he was not afraid to 
utter the truth, and the whole truth, Why did he confine 
all true worship to the worship of the Father alone ? Was 



14 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

it for any other reason than that the worship of the Father, 
and the Father only, was the truth and the whole truth in 
the matter? What Christ taught might be "unevangelical" 
in the view of a Congregationalist minister, but there it 
stands indelible, "graven in the rock forever." 

Again, in Matthew 6: 6, Christ directly enjoins that prayer 
be made to the "Father who is in secret," for that the 
Father will "openly reward" His sincere petitioners. In 
the 9th verse Christ solved the problem by a plain direction 
concerning prayer, viz., to whom and how it should be 
offered. He says, "After this manner pray ye, Our Father, 
who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name," &c, &c. No 
Jesus Christ, no Holy Ghost, but the Father only; all the 
nouns, pronouns and verbs being in the singular number. 

If we look further, and especially into the Gospel by St. 
John, which is strangely supposed by some to favor the 
doctrine of Christ's deity, we shall be confronted with very 
pointed testimony. In John, 15 : 16, Christ tells his disciples 
that "Whatsoever they should ask of the Father in his 
name the Father would give it to them, ' ' which plainly is 
that they must ask gifts from the Father whilst praying to 
Him in the character of believers in Christ. In John 16: 23 
Christ makes a yet more distinct and decided step away 
from the idea of his own supremacy by admonishing his 
disciples that "in that day," or subsequently to his resur- 
rection and corporeal retirement from the earth, they should 
"Ask him nothing," for "Verily, verily, whatsoever they 
should ask of the Father in Christ's name, the Father 
would give it to them. ' ' Are we then to be denounced 
because we understand that in these and similar instructions 
it was Christ's express design to warn his followers of that 
time and all coming ages against making prayer to him, or 
in any way rendering him that supreme worship which is 
due to God alone ? His whole drift and purpose seem to 
have been diametrically opposite to the views entertained 
by our Trinitarian Congregationalist. 

Beyond what absolutely belonged to Christ as the 
envoy, the ambassador, and representative on earth of God 
Most High, Christ sought no honors or distinctions. The 
only honor which Christ valued was what came to him 
from God. (John, 8: 54.) And it was great and glorious. 
(2d Peter, 1:17.) 

The New Testament furnishes no instance where the 
apostles ever paid "divine worship" to Christ as to God, 
though to their hearts' chores they loved and venerated 
Christ as the Lord and Master of all Christians, the Saviour 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 5 

and the visible final Judge of the World. The Congrega- 
tionalist minister who puts his ' ' paying divine honors ' ■ to 
Christ on the ground of what is said in ist Corinthians i : 2 
about ' ' calling upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, ' ' 
greatly overshoots the mark, forbearing to look at the very 
next verse, which would have corrected his error, and for- 
getting the Apostolic intimation in chapter 8th, verses 5th 
and 6th, of the same Epistle, that how numerous soever 
might be those who are called gods and lords, whether in 
heaven or in earth, yet "to us (Christians) there is but One 
God, the Father, and One Lord, Jesus Christ." To call 
Christ ' ' Lord " is to speak as a Christian should speak ; to 
call him God is to speak without a justifying reason from 
the Book of God. More even than this : it should be re- 
membered that even when we denominate Christ by the 
secondary title of "Lord," which he rightly claimed to 
be his due, it is not to be done without an ulterior reference 
to the superintending provisions and mercy, and therefore 
* ' to the glory of God the Father. ' ' (Philipp. ,2:11.) 

If it were permissible to worship the image of God in- 
stead of God Himself, then it might be lawful to worship 
Christ supremely, for Christ is the moral image of God. 
But nowhere is such a liberty granted. God ' ' will not 
give His glory to another. ' ' Man is commanded to wor- 
ship God alone, " no other God," Exod., 34: 14, and with 
the profoundest humility, ist Cor., 14:25, and Nehemiah, 
8: 6. We shall fulfil our duty and pay just honors to Christ 
when we do whatsoever he commanded, believe in what he 
really said, and carry in our hearts a due sense of the 
immense obligation we owe him. To exceed these lawful 
limits and accord to him the honors and worship due only 
to God, may subject us to be ranked among idolaters 
instead of Christians. 

The second clause of the first Church article affirms the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to be of " one substance, ' ' 
meaning thereby one essence or material, but it deigns no 
information as to how or where the asserted fact was dis- 
covered, or why the Bible has failed to testify about so 
prime a point of belief. There is, however, some verbal 
ambiguity, for it is doubtful whether by " one substance " 
we are to understand one connected whole, so that the three 
must be considered in combination, or whether by "one 
substance ' ' is intended the same substance, ' ' or essence, so 
that the three may still be personally disconnected and 
their persons individually limited and separate. In this 
latter sense, which seems to be that intended, neither of 



1 6 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

the persons can be infinite, for his infinity is bounded by 
the equal personalities of the two others. Dr. Burgess saw 
this plainly. 

But to recur. With regard to the bold and unsustained 
assertion relative to the composition of the godhead and 
the "unity of the substance " of the same, it is to be said 
that in spirit and letter it is at flagrant war with some of 
the most impressive teachings of God's Word. The Divine 
Being announced Himself to the Israelitish people by Moses 
as the "I AM," the Self-existent ONE, — not three, as 
according to Dr. Watts, &c. — and by Christ, the great 
Heaven-sent teacher, as ' k A Spirit ' ' and not a ' ' sub- 
stance," and to be "worshipped in spirit and in truth" 
Any language, therefore, which savors of materiality is 
the reverse of appropriate when applied to the nature of 
God, and we may securely assume it as certain that the 
wide departure from the true Christian doctrine, and which 
departure so unhappily obtained in the third and fourth 
and succeeding centuries of the Christian era, was mainly 
due to the low conceptions which so easily prevailed among 
the Gentile as distinguished from the Hebrew converts to 
Christianity. We may, perhaps, derive hence some inti- 
mation of the reason why in conveying His authoritative 
truth to mankind, the Divine Being chose to send it by the 
minds, mouths, and pens of the children of Abraham rather 
than by Gentile channels. Nearly every one of the books 
of even the New Testament was written by a Jew. 

One stands astounded at the squabbles and contentions 
of those reeking centuries when the texture of the in- 
scrutable godhead formed the ground of strife ; when men 
who were far worse informed than the children of our 
schools upon the topics of natural history and philosophy 
and general science, undertook with an irreverent rashness 
to formulate (as we have it in the Nicene and Athanasian 
creeds) dogmas about the nature and interior organization 
of the Most High, as if the divine anatomy were spread in 
extenso before them. 

That there are in the universe and in the Bible what are 
therein denominated the Father, the Son and the Holy 
Spirit, is a truth of unsurpassable gravity and importance. 
What these existences are and what they arc not arc two 
matters amply revealed in the Divine Word. Of the 
Father — undoubtedly the Jehovah of the Old Testament — 
we learn by the mouths of Christ and his Apostles that 
He is the "only true God," or that the Father, and the 
Father only, is God. Of the Son we are taught by the 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 7 

same divine oracles that he was brought into being at a 
specified period, not yet 1900 years ago, through a special 
exertion of the divine influence upon the person of a 
Jewish maiden, and because of this divine paternity he 
has always been justly called the Son of God. Of the 
Spirit, very commonly denominated the Holy Ghost, we 
are scripturally informed that it ' ' proceedeth from the 
Father," as it ever has done and ever will do, and as it 
especially and signally did when by its means (Luke, 1 : 35) 
a commencement was made of the being of him named 
Jesus, the Son of God and Saviour of the world. 

Nor does God's holy word refuse to the candid and 
inquiring mind a true knowledge of the nature — so far as 
comprehensible by our faculties — of God, of His Son and 
of His Spirit. God the universal Creator and Father, is an 
eternal Spirit, more boundless than the universes of matter 
and of mind, filling, sustaining and controlling them 
throughout. The heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. 
The Son, who by reason of his being the divinely appointed 
leader and king of the present and future world of regener- 
ate men, became the Anointed or the Christ, declares to 
us upon his personal word and official authority (Luke, 
24: 37 to 43) that he is not a spirit, but a being such as our- 
selves ; that is to say, a soul encompassed by bodily organs, 
hands, feet, &c, and that spirits are not so endowed. The 
Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father, 
is therefore pure spirit, the closest emanation and out- 
pouring from God and the immediate instrument of His 
Divine Will. All three are instructively referred to in 
Acts 5: 29 to 32. It was because the soul and spirit of 
Jesus were anointed and interpenetrated by this Holy 
Ghost, not only that he was constituted to be the Christ, 
but was kept throughout his life upon earth entirely free 
from sin ; in a word, it was because Jesus was ever full of 
the Holy Ghost that he enjoyed that greatest of conceivable 
blessings and distinctions, viz., the "dwelling in the bosom 
of the Father, ' ' and was empowered to speak as never man 
before spake, to work the mightiest miracles and to rise 
triumphantly from the dead. (See Isaiah, chap, nth.) 
That Spirit from whose overshadowing influence Christ 
originally sprang ; which filled his moral and intellectual 
nature throughout his whole life on earth ' ' until the day 
in which he was taken up, ' ' and thus enabled him ' ' to 
give commandments unto the Apostles whom he had 
chosen," was, doubtless, the same agency through which, 
even in heaven, ' ' God gave unto him that Revelation which 



1 8 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

he sent and signified by his angel to his servant John." 
By that same Spirit also did Jesus, "the first begotten of 
the dead and the Prince of the kings of the earth," speak 
unto the churches. In every respect that Divine Spirit, 
always originally proceeding from the Father but mediately 
through the Son, 

"Lives through all life, extends through all extent ; 
Spreads undivided; operates unspent." 

The English word " Spirit " or "Ghost," in the phrases 
"Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" of the Old and New 
Testaments, is the translation of a word that in Greek 
means "what has been breathed," that is to say, "breath." 
In Latin, the same. The primary idea evidently is that 
the Spirit of God, or the Holy Ghost, is an emanation 
from the Divine personality, analogous to the breath of 
man, or man's utterance, expressive of his will. When it is 
said in the first of Genesis that "the Spirit of God moved 
upon the face of the waters," it is as if it were written 
" the breath of God went forth upon the face of the 
waters." How fraught that " breath of God " was with 
irresistible efficiency and perfectness in all respects, all 
can understand. David, in the 33d Psalm, says: " By the 
word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host 
of them by the breath of His mouth " — the breath being 
the medium by which the irresistible word was conveyed. 
And in Job, 38 : 4, " The Spirit of God hath made me, and 
the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." When 
man was formed from the dust of the earth God "breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living 
soul" — the Divine breath or Spirit bearing life along with 
itself. 

Now, God being himself a Spirit, the Holy Ghost is a 
spiritual procession from His person, and not a separate 
deity ; it is God's avenue for action upon and communica- 
tion with all beings and things exterior to Himself, and 
is always in constant outflow to the whole spiritual and 
material creations. With this divine and all-efficacious 
Spirit Jesus Christ was "anointed" or endued. It was 
afterwards entrusted to Christ's direction, for after his 
resurrection he breathed on his disciples, saying, ' ' Receive 
ye the Holy Ghost." On the great day of Pentecost the 
Holy Ghost was freely shed forth, doubtless through the 
hands of Christ ; and on other occasions. The same Spirit 
was likewise confided to the hands of the Apostles for 
distribution among converts to Christ — Acts, 8: 17; n: 17; 
15 : 8. It would be nothing short of profane absurdity to 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 9 

suppose that the Apostles Peter and John could commu- 
nicate a divine personality, that is to say, God in his proper 
person, to the Samaritan believers. 

We perceive, then, that in so far as to the Father and the 
Son they are not of the ' ' same substance. ' ' Equally 
wrong is it to say that they are of the same "eternity," 
(referring to the eternity that is past,) for whilst God, as 
' ' the Ancient of days, ' ' has lived for ever and ever, Christ 
His Son came first into existence so lately as the days of 
Herod King of Judea, through the aforesaid originating 
power of the Holy Ghost. Thus it does not appear that 
the second part of the first Episcopal "Article of Re- 
ligion ' ' was prepared with due respect and consideration 
for the Word of God. Moses and the prophets, Christ 
and his Apostles and Evangelists, seemed to have weighed 
very lightly as against the tumid interpolations by the 
Nicene council into the good old Apostles' creed, and that 
other effusion without a known parentage, mis-called the 
Athanasian, of which the American Episcopalians thought 
too dubiously to admit it into their prayer-book. 

A vigorous writer, indignant at the utterly undue homage 
still paid to the out-put from the tumultuous assemblages 
at Nice and Constantinople, thus remarks: "It is bad 
enough that the church should have inherited her chief 
formulas of belief from such an age and such a reign as 
that of Constantine ; a reign hideous with guilt ; an age so 
surrendered to depraved morals and misdirected intellect, 
that, if ever there could be in Christendom an incapacity 
for discerning spiritual truth, it must have been then. But 
to make such a time the rule for all others, — to dignify by 
the name of ' ' the Catholic faith ' ' the propositions which 
emerged from its wranglings by outvoting or outreaching 
the rest ; to scorn, in comparison, the light of recent thought, 
and constrain the modern Anglo-Saxon to put back the 
index of his Christian consciousness to the hour when 
Athanasius triumphed, — is a weak rebellion against provi- 
dential tendencies, and an irreligious scepticism of God's 
perpetual inspiration." 

By way of covering his own unscrupulous machinations 
at the council of Nice, it was a subsequent remark of 
Athanasius that "God spoke to the world through that 
council. ' ' He could in truth have added that in so speak- 
ing there was unspoken nearly all that had been spoken 
before by Moses and the Prophets ; by Christ and his 
Apostles. The poet Moore, well read in ancient learning, 
frankly admits, Roman Catholic that he was, in a note to 



20 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

his poem on Intolerance, that "the corruptions introduced 
into Christianity may be dated from the period of its estab- 
lishment under Constantine ; nor could all the splendor 
which it then acquired atone for the peace and purity 
which it lost." 

The second Episcopal article is remarkable for its robust- 
ness of speech and confidence of expression, as if it exult- 
ingly hoped to compel assent by sheer force of loud-sounding 
phraseology. A little examination will, nevertheless, show 
out of what so much exceeding boldness took its rise. 
Professors of the Nicene faith have always betrayed a pro- 
pensity for nestling their dogmas in the few difficult spots 
or dark passages of the volume of Scripture. A hundred 
texts — plain, clear, positive and direct — appear to weigh 
nothing in point of conclusiveness against some one, or 
two possibly, of a figurative and hence somewhat obscure 
character, which they can interpret to suit themselves. In 
the case before us the reliance is upon the two or three 
brief verses introductory to the Gospel by John. The bulk 
of the Gospel goes for almost nothing. 

Upon this contracted footing, misunderstood and misin- 
terpreted, Nicenists are fain to erect their system, of which 
the second article under consideration furnishes a fair 
example. They construe it to mean that the Son — whom 
we call Jesus Christ — existed in co-equality with the Father 
from all eternity, or that there never was a moment in the 
history of the Father when the Son was not present with 
Him in absolute and equal fulness of Divine power and 
perfection. They, therefore, feel authorized in declaring 
Christ to be "very and eternal God," composed of "one" 
or the same "substance," or material, with the Father, so 
that the Father begat the Son out of Himself as early as 
the Father possessed His own being. 

Now, every one acquainted with the Gospels in their full 
extent — the first three of which were certainly well known 
to John when in the closing years of the first century he 
wrote his own — will recollect how it was that Jesus, after- 
wards the Christ, came to be called the Son of God. His 
primitive title to that distinguished name grew out of the 
fact (Luke i: 35) that the Holy Ghost, or the emanant 
influence of the Most High, had, taking locum genitoris y 
originated his being. Another ground for his bearing the 
title was the audibly divine endorsement of the fact just 
stated, by the acknowledgment of Jesus as His beloved Son 
immediately following Christ's baptism by John the Bap- 
tist, (Matt., 3: 17 ; Mark, 1: n ; Luke, 3: '22) ; and a third 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 21 

and, if possible, yet stronger reason when he was declared 
"the Son of God with power," — "the Son of God with 
power by his resurrection from the dead. ' ' On still another 
ground, though a more general one, none so worthy as Jesus 
to be called the Son of God (Romans 8:14), "For as many 
as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, " 
and by the Spirit of God Christ was always led. 

On these several and assuredly sufficient accounts, and 
for no other reason whatever, the scriptures denominate 
Jesus the Son of God. But the second article ignores all 
these intelligible, reasonable and scriptural statements, and 
sets up Christ's title to sonship upon what it probably deems 
far better grounds, as being infinitely anterior and more 
sublime. That sonship, says the article, (and all Nicenists, 
Papal and Protestant, join the accord,) began from "ever- 
lasting. ' ' Thus they undertake to locate the date. Neither 
do they hesitate to define the manner in which Christ at 
first became a "Son." He was, they say, "begotten" 
(whatever that might mean) "of" or by "the Father," 
leaving no other inference, if they do not directly say it, 
than that the Father begat the Son out of His own, that 
is, the Father's "substance," without the concomitancy 
of any other being. 

Not desiring to push this scrutiny into Nicenist dogma- 
tism any farther just here, let us ask, if such teachings be 
be true, how comes it to pass that the Bible nowhere in- 
culcates them? Why did the Divine Being, in His most 
benignant condescension to the Israelitish people, omit to 
inform Moses (Exodus 3 : 14) as to the actual circumstances 
of the celestial sovereignty, and instead of saying as He 
did, "I am hath sent thee," why did he not the rather 
say ' ' We are have sent thee, ' ' thereby paying due honor 
to the co-deified Son, and reporting the case as it truly was? 
It would have been equally effective with the yet untaught 
Israelites. 

Why again, if the throne of heaven was from all eternity 
occupied by more than one divine person, did God strictly 
command his people to listen while it was proclaimed 
(Deut. , 6:4), " The Lord our God is One Lord ; ' ' and why 
did He, after repeatedly declaring through his prophets 
that He was the "Holy One' 1 '' of Israel, put the question 
(Isaiah, 44:8), "Is there a God beside me? Yea, there 
is no God ; I know not any." Also, " I am Jehovah, and 
there is none else; there is no God beside me;" and in 
Deut, 32 : 39, " I, even I, am He, and there is no God with 
me." Are we to suppose that all this and vastly more of 



22 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

the same character that could be readily quoted was a mass 
of misleading and mistake, calculated to produce wrong im- 
pressions that would have to wait for correction the greater 
part of two thousand years, or till after Athanasius had 
superseded Sinai and the temple at Jerusalem by decrees 
issued from the palace of a semi-Pagan emperor in a semi- 
heathen land? Who with God's holy word in his hands 
and a ruling desire to know God's holy truth in his heart, 
will suppose any such thing? 

It has been remarked that Nicenists had seized upon 
the three brief verses at the commencement of John's 
Gospel whereon to build their peculiar system, with sub- 
stantially no regard to the great multitude of explicit 
statements of doctrine and duty which go to make up the 
whole remainder of that Gospel, the other Gospels, and the 
Bible at large. Though they have thus seized upon those 
verses they have no valid title to them. Their policy was 
to assume or beg the question of the identity of the Word, 
not with the Son of God of the New Testament, who was 
born at Bethlehem, but with the Son, — that is to say, the 
" God-the-Son " — who, according to their creeds, was 
begotten infinite ages before the beginning of time, and 
reigned in heaven forever afterwards as " very and eternal 
God," in common and equal majesty with his Father. 

Overlooking, then, for the present, the consideration that 
there would thus inevitably be more Gods than One, the 
question before us will be to inquire whether the Word 
mentioned in the aforesaid verses was meant by John for a 
person endowed with the full round of faculties and prop- 
erties that duly attach to personality, or was simply an 
utterance-forth or expression of the divine mind and will 
sent out into the surrounding universe, furnished with all 
appropriate divine forces to do His bidding. Contrariwise 
from the Nicenists, we take the ground that the Word was 
not a person, but what it was claimed to be, viz., a Word, 
or utterance forth, analogously to the decree, mandate, 
order, ukase, or firman of an earthly potentate, and instinct 
with every divine power and virtue. Of course, we do not 
indicate that it was but a single word, for, from the Infinite 
God — analogously with rays from the single sun in the 
sky — words have forever proceeded in infinite directions 
and on infinite errands to the infinitely numerous objects 
of his love and care. 

The first five verses of the preface to the Gospel of John, 
literally translated from the Greek, are after this wise : 

" In the beginning was the word, and the word was 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 23 

with God, and the word was God. The same was in the 
beginning with God. All things came to pass through 
him (or it), and without him (or it) not one thing came to 
pass of what did come to pass. In him (or it) was life, and 
the life was the light of men. And the light appears in 
the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend it. ' ' The 
words (him or it) are inserted because in Greek the noun 
for "word " is masculine ; in Latin, it is neuter.* 

Now, it cannot be said that this language is quite so 
plain, explicit, and matter-of-fact as the introductions to 
the other gospels, for which reason, as we have already 
observed, the professors of the Nicene faith seem somewhat 
naturally to take to it. It is not absolutely certain what 
John meant b}^ ' ' the beginning, ' ' whether of the universe, 
of this world, of the Christian dispensation, or of what. 

The Nicenist doctrine is that the " Word " is not to be 
understood as an impersonal utterance of the divine mind 
and will, but as a distinct living being or person, fully 
equipped with all the attributes of personality, and they 
add that the word is the Son, participating and equal in 
divine majesty and glory with the Father, of whose own 
substance or material he (the Son) was by the Father be- 
gotten. Have they, however, a just right to add this ? The 
Evangelist John does not authorize it. If, for argument 
sake, we temporarily adopt .the Nicene idea that the 
" Word " is the synonym for the "Son," then John teaches 
and repeats that the ' ' Word ' ' was in the beginning ' ' with 
God." Thus John will have introduced two originally 
cotemporaneous and independent Gods, of which the Word 
is set forth as the more operative and efficient, and not a 
syllable or a hint is uttered about his being the ' ' Word of 
the Father," or "begotten of the Father from everlast- 
ing." John's language does not call for these concessions 
to God the Father, who, it cannot be denied, is made, on 
the Nicene hypothesis, to appear far less advantageously 
creative and energetic than the Word or Son, which, by 
the way, may help us to account for the disparagement of 
the Father in comparison with the Son, so common as to 

*The proem, or first fourteen verses of John's Gospel, looks much like 
the responsive part of a dialogue with the questions omitted. Had we the 
supposed questions, all would, doubtless, be easy. There are in the Gospel 
eight hundred and eighty-five verses, wherefore the proem constitutes 
about a sixty-third part of the whole. It is obvious that this fractional 
part must not be interpreted in conflict with the mass of the Gospel, and 
that this little which is in some degree obscure must not dominate the 
much which is clear and unmistakable. The real purpose of the Gospel 
is disclosed in chapter 20 : 31. 



24 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

be wellnigh universal in Nicene writings, worship, and 
song. * 

From all which we must conclude that the dictum of the 
opening of the Second Article has no color of support from 
the preface to John's Gospel so far as to the dogma of the 
"Son's being the Word of the Father, begotten from Ever- 
lasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one 
substance with the Father. ' ' We, therefore, unhesitatingly 
reject it, as unscriptural and a mere human invention, 
imposed upon mankind in days of ignorance, intolerance, 
and corruption. We advise its rejection by all who in these 
happier times prefer the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth in matters of religion as well as everything 
else. 

The Apostle John, by general consent, was at the time 
he wrote his Gospel a resident of the maritime city of 
Ephesus, in Asia Minor. He was by nation a Jew, and 
lived under the influence of christianized Jewish ideas and 
opinions during the latter half of his long life. Wherever 
he went or lived, and especially when in the cosmopolitan 
city of Ephesus, he was witness to continual differences 
and discussions about the Logos, that is to say, the Word, 
in connexion with the creation and ordering of the visible 
world. Of much that he heard he necessarily disapproved, 
so that when he came to write his Gospel he at once solved 
the perplexing problem by advancing in medias res with 
the sceptre of divine inspiration in his hand, and in a few 
brief but authoritative sentences, showed that the ' ' Word, ' ' 
so much debated about, was no separate divinity, but was 
God himself, in the midst of His attributes, the God of 
the Jews and the Creator and Giver of all that was and is 
good and great, visible and invisible. 

In this way John brought all speculation back to the 

* The following is an extract from a sermon delivered in a church in 
the city of Washington on January 3d, 1886, imbibed, doubtless, by the 
large congregation as if it were the veritable milk of the word : 

"As it would have profited us nothing to have been born unless we had 
been redeemed, it follows how much greater was the work of redemption 
than of the creation, and so much greater is the name of Jesus than the 
name of Jehovah. Jehovah is the principle of being, the source and prin- 
ciple of life, but Jesus is the source and principle of grace, of glory, and of 
salvation. Jehovah was the vanquisher of Pharaoh, but Jesus is the van- 
quisher of the devil and of hell. The one was the lawgiver of the Old 
Testament and of the Jews, the other of the New Testament. Jehovah 
led the people of Israel through the Red Sea into the laud of Canaan, but 
Jesus, by his most precious blood, has conducted us from sin to innocence, 
from earth to heaven, and most fitting it is that the Christian world 
should be mindful of him who lias loved us so much. * * In every 

act of his life Jesus proclaimed himself the God and Saviour of the poor." 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 25 

great Mosaic and Christian principle that God was and is 
in Himself the beginning and the end of all things, the 
"all in all." And then, further on, when, by a single, 
bold, but most appropriate and comprehensive figure, he 
demonstrated how the full volume of divine wisdom had 
been poured into the individual soul of the only-begotten 
Son, — he gave the highest possible credential to Christ's 
Messiahship and just authority over the opinions, con- 
sciences, and lives of mankind. 

The Second Article goes on next to say that " the Son, 
the very and eternal God, of one substance with' the Father, 
took man's nature in the womb of the blessed virgin, of 
her substance. ' ' This intimates that the ' ' very and eternal 
God-the-Son," after having become a voluntary occupant 
of the womb of the blessed virgin, took her substance into 
union with his own. If the question be asked how much 
of the substance of God-the-Son was then taken, the article 
answers that it was his ' ' whole and perfect nature, ' ' that 
is to say, his entire godhead. This, ' ' joined ' ' to the ' ' whole 
and perfect nature" derived from the virgin, constitutes 
the "one person," Christ, who is therefore described as 
"very God and very man." Hence, it must be concluded, 
according to the article, that the union between God-the-Son 
and the virgin Mary, was, in point of fact, a veritable 
marriage union, paralleled in the case of human couples 
that become united in the bonds of matrimony. Under 
the influence of this doctrine the effusiveness of some of 
the Roman Catholic divines of France breaks forth in 
praises of the degree of ravishing beauty which the purity 
and holiness of the virgin had reached, causing God-the-Son 
to hasten the period of the Incarnation. One of these 
ecclesiastics (Pere Gratry) distinctly says that it was the 
Son's "love for Mary which more than anything else led 
him to descend from heaven." 

But what is most remarkable in all this Nicene or Episco- 
pal doctrine, is the total absence of God the Father (either 
in His own immediate personality or through the medium 
of the Holy Ghost) from the whole proceeding. 

If we compare the Second Article of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church with the statements of the Gospels on 
the subject of Christ's generation, the discrepancy between 
the two will be very marked. Luke says, ' 'And the angel 
answered and said unto Mary, The Holy Ghost shall come 
upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
thee ; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of 
thee shall be called the Son of God." But, according to 



26 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

the Nicene dogma, in which Roman Catholics and most 
Protestant sects coincide, neither the Father nor the Holy 
Ghost was the actual parent of Jesus Christ. That parent, 
according to those authorities, was God-the-Son, so that, 
analogously to human relationships, God the Father was 
only Christ's grandfather, and, especially in the Episcopal 
article, the Holy Ghost was altogether dispensed with and 
out of the question. 

There is no reason to suppose the very unlikely circum- 
stance that the Apostle and Evangelist John would teach 
in his very brief passing preface a doctrine so conflicting 
and variant from the entire body of his Gospel, as that 
there are more Gods than One, or other persons in the god- 
head than the Father. The word he speaks of is therefore 
no other than the word of God, which, whatever might be 
the date of the "beginning," has ever and will ever utter 
itself forth to every intelligent and sentient being in the 
universe. 

This Word, never apart from the divine personality, 
contains within itself all the authority, force and practi- 
cal essentiality of God himself; it is therefore before His 
presence, or "with" Him, and cannot be distinguished 
from Him. It is, in fact, to all that is exterior to it, God, 
and has never been otherwise. Thus the true God has 
never been an inactive or restful deity, selfishly satisfied 
with His own supremacy and unassailable happiness, and 
unconcerned about the world's welfare, like what is de- 
scribed concerning Brahma or the Jupiter of old, but a 
Divine Parent of unutterable love, perpetually sending 
forth whatever is needful for the well-being of His manifold 
offspring. 

Such, we believe, to be a great aim of John's teaching. 
Why should it not be, consistent as it is with the majesty 
and honor of the Most High, and with the dictates of 
well-regulated human reason at its best estate? This Di- 
vine Word, or Utterance, has ever been instinct with life 
and light, and especially to the spiritual being of men. In 
the fulness of time God gathered the rays thus scattered 
into a focus, with the purpose of illustrating their excel- 
lence and value by a living example begotten, born, reared 
and prepared for the sublimest earthly office under the 
very auspices of God himself. So perfect was that oracle 
and that example that by an easy and perspicuous figure 
of speech, yet a figure that rather strengthens than weak- 
ens the meaning behind it, the divine word became en- 
shrined in the flesh, or embodied in the material person of 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 2J 

Jesus, the Christ, so as to be identified with him. That 
wonderful production, the Epistle to the Hebrews, strikes 
off this pregnant truth with instructive brevity in its 
introductory statement: "God, who at sundry times and in 
divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the 
prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his 
Son." .There we have it, gathered as it were into a nut- 
shell — God's all-abounding wisdom, will and word, formerly 
spread through many minds of seers and prophets, now 
gathered to a focus in the teachings and life of Jesus 
Christ. 

No Protestant who steadily rejects the Roman Catholic 
interpretation of the Saviour's words at his breaking of 
the bread and giving of the cup at the last supper, can 
consistently stumble at John's beautiful figure, " the Word 
became flesh, ' ' that is, was planted into humanity. Yet, 
setting personal consistency and John's true meaning 
aside, a doctrine, too mythological for a Bible truth, and 
called the Incarnation, has been allowed to grow out of it 
and to engage an exceedingly deep interest in many Pro- 
testant minds. It is true that the word "Incarnation," 
that thus captivates, has no place in the Bible, in which 
respect it resembles its congener, the Trinity; for the 
Bible having no cognizance of the things signified, had 
no occasion for names to distinguish them. As the ablest 
Nicene doctors fail to explain it, the doctrine of the Incar- 
nation falls under the congenial category of mystery. It 
may be remarked that Hilary, bishop of Poictiers, in France, 
a luminary of Nicenian times, says of the Incarnation, 
that it "consisted in Christ's self-emptying of himself, and 
his assumption of human nature. " "In this process, ' ' says 
Hilary, ' ' he lost none of his divine nature, and even during 
the humiliation he continued to reign every where, in heaven 
and on earth." How Christ, or any being whatever, could 
empty himself of himself and still part with nothing of 
what he had been, may be plain to Nicenian intellects, but 
by every other class of minds must be regarded as a self- 
contradiction. Again, could that be properly called a 
' ' humiliation ' ' which was a ' ' continual reign everywhere 
in heaven and on earth ' ' ? With all the display of wisdom 
on this subject, the professors of it have never deigned to 
point to the sources of their information. 

To all who read the scriptures with a prevailing desire 
to understand them aright, there will be no real difficulty 
in the prologue to John's Gospel, especially when it is faith- 
fully translated and not forced into a service which it would 



28 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

not itself elect. The mere English reader must, neverthe- 
less, be warned against a mistranslation in the ioth verse* 
which should be read, " He" (or it), referring to the true 
light, "was in the world and the world got its existence 
through (or, because of) him (or it), and the world knew 
him (or it) not," which appears fairly to teach that when 
Christ, in whom the true light shone, (and for whose final 
and perpetual dominion as head of his redeemed church 
the earth itself was constituted, ) came into the world, his 
presence was not generally recognized. He came amongst- 
his own proper people, the Jews, but was not nationally 
accepted, yet those spiritually-born few who did accept 
and believe in him, received from him, by the baptisms of 
water and the Spirit, power to become sons of God. In 
the 14th verse John speaks of Christ in the flesh as the 
"only begotten of the Father," whilst, as we have seen, 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, in its Second Article, 
assigns to the Christ in the flesh an origin not from the 
Father but from the "very and eternal " Son! 

To obtain a just understanding of the introduction to 
John's Gospel it will be necessary to read with attention 
the Epistles by the same writer. They will, we doubt not, 
amply confirm the view that the Father only is God and 
Jesus Christ is truly his Son. Of one verse in the first 
Epistle the general reader must have a care. The seventh 
verse of the fifth chapter was not written by John, but was 
in some unknown way interpolated into the sacred text 
between three hundred and four hundred years ago. The 
motive we do not assign, but of its effect it can surely be 
said that the counterfeit has been a chief prop to the popular 
belief of the Trinity. The recently Revised Version omits 
it, for of late years its character has become increasingly 
"bad ; though there are those who regret the expunction of 
so handy a witness to the great leading dogma. 

The Third Episcopal Article states that during the brief 
interval between the death and resurrection of Jesus "he 
went down into hell," meaning not the grave, nor that 
invisible state which was called by the ancient Greeks 
"Hades" and the Hebrews "Sheol," but the place of 
perpetual torment and everlasting despair, scriptunilly 
designated "Ge-Hinnom," or "Gehenna," and occasion- 
ally, Tophet. Bishop Pearson, an honored light of the 
English Episcopal Church, speaks as follows in his Exposi- 
tion of the Creed : ' ' 1st. The soul of Christ, really separated 
from his body by death, did truly pass unto the places below 
where the souls of men departed were. I conceive the end 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 29 

for which he did so was that he might undergo the condi- 
tion of a dead man as well as of a living. He appeared 
here in the similitude of sinful flesh, and went into the 
other world in the similitude of a sinner. In the interim 
between death and resurrection there is nothing left, at 
least known to us, but to satisfy the law of death. This 
he undertook to do, and did. 2d. By the descent of Christ 
into hell all those which believe in him are secured from 
descending thither; he went unto those regions of darkness 
that our souls might never come into those torments which 
are there. By his descent he freed us from our fears, as by 
his ascension he secured us of our hopes. He passed to 
those habitations where Satan hath taken up possession 
and exerciseth his dominion, that having no power over 
him, we might be assured that he should never exercise 
any over our souls departed as belonging to him. * * * 
Because there was no sin in Christ, and he had fully satisfied 
for the sins of others, which he took upon him, therefore as 
God suffered not His Holy One to see corruption, so he left 
not his soul in hell, and thereby gave sufficient security to 
all those who belong to Christ of never coming under the 
power of Satan, or suffering in the flames prepared for the 
devil and his angels. ' ' 

Such is an exposition of the article, but it is questionable 
whether the subject had not better be left in that silence 
which is observed towards it in the x^postles' Creed, as 
that creed was in its original and authentic shape before it 
was meddled with by Nicenist fingers at the provincial 
council of Aquileia, A. D. 381. In this view this much 
may be said, that when the Saviour gave up the ghost 
upon the cross he commended his spirit into his Father's 
hands. Can we identify the going into the Father's hands 
with a descent into the pit that is bottomless? Again, to 
the penitent and believing thief on his cross, Jesus said, 
' ' To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. ' ' We have- 
no disposition to protrude any solution or explanation of 
our own in the matter. Non nobis componere lites. 

The Fourth Article professes firm faith in Christ's resur- 
rection and reassumption of the body complete in all its 
parts ; with which body he subsequently ascended into 
heaven, where he now sits and will sit until he shall come 
to execute a final judgment upon the whole human race, 
not because he is God, but for the very reason that he is 
man. (John, 5:27.) In connection with this article it 
may not be inappropriate to call to mind that the Christ 
who thus ascended was, by his own declaration, (Luke, 



30 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

24:39), "be, himself," and not a mere spirit, but an organ- 
ized human being, capable of audible speech, of eating 
and drinking, of being touched and handled, and of being 
seen by the eyes of men, like any other material body, 
when he was taken up from the mount called Olivet, a 
short distance east of Jerusalem. It can further be said, 
on the irrefragable testimony of the Word of God, that 
Jesus was not only seen by human eyes in the act of ascend- 
ing up on high, but has been seen since, even when in 
heaven itself; seen there as "the Son of man," "standing 
on the right hand of God. ' ' (Acts, 7 : 55 and 56. ) Believers 
in the Trinity may have reason to ask their theologues how 
it came to pass that Stephen, in beholding through the 
opened heavens "the glory of God," did not, like Dr. 
Watts in his "Sight of Christ," discern "the Almighty 
Three"? The Holy Ghost, as appears by the sacred 
record, was at the time down in Stephen's heart, in- 
spiring it with spiritual supports, whilst the martyr saw 
up in the celestial realm, not God, indeed, but "the glory 
of God, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of 
God," a separate object of vision. No such person or 
being as ' ' God-the-Son ' ' was anywhere descried. No such 
person was there. 

Stephen's account of what, for more sakes than his, he 
was granted to see in that heavenly home of bliss and 
glory, cannot be placed on the credit side of Nicenism. 
The testimony against Nicenism is ociilar and direct — in 
fact, irresistible. 

Nor does Stephen's personal evidence stand alone upon 
the face of the Scripture record. The great-souled Paul, 
the Apostle of the Gentiles, who preached the gospel not 
after man, for he did not receive it from man, neither was 
taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ, — the 
mighty Paul has also furnished us with an interior view 
of celestial circumstances. He describes how he had been 
caught up to the third heaven, into Paradise, where he 
heard unspeakable words which it was not lawful for him 
to utter. He tells us, elsewhere, probably from his per- 
sonal knowledge, that within the city of the Living God, 
the heavenly Jerusalem, there dwell an innumerable com- 
pany of angels. That there is in it the general assembly 
and church of the first-born, who arc written in heaven ; 
God the Judge of all, and the spirits of just men made 
perfect. There is Jesus, the mediator of the new coven- 
ant, and the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things 
than the blood of iVbel. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 3 1 

Does Paul tell of any Trinity in Paradise ? Not a syllable 
about it. He speaks of God, the Judge of all — one God 
and no more ; of Jesus, in no respect as God or a part of 
God, but as the mediator of the new covenant, which only 
mediator he describes (ist Tim., 2:5) as "the man Christ 
Jesus." We may hence securely conclude that there is no 
Trinity either in heaven or in the Bible, and no where else 
save in creeds, the work of ill-advised men in wrong-headed 
and demoralized times. That a crowd of very fallible men, 
having the priceless treasure of the Old and New Testa- 
ments and the excellent compendium of the Apostles' creed 
within their reach, should assume to set up a counter-creed 
and compel devotion to it under peril of loss of liberty and 
life, amply justifies the condemnation of them and their 
work to the censure of right-minded men as long as the 
human race shall endure. 

Article Fifth, which says that "The Holy Ghost, pro- 
ceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, 
majesty and glory with the Father and the Son, very and 
eternal God. ' ' 

We have Christ's conclusive testimony that the Holy 
Ghost " proceedeth from the Father," (John, 15:26,) and 
is sent by the Father in Christ's name, and as all the divine 
agencies relating to salvation were at the period of the 
consummation of Christ's earthly ministry given unre- 
servedly into his hands (Matt., 26:18), the Fifth Article 
is not to that extent unscriptural, if it be concurrently 
understood that the Holy Ghost not only proceeds from — 
but originates with — the Father, and that in the Son it is 
only derivative . The Nicene creed, which was commenced 
at the council of Nice in the year 325, but was not com- 
pleted till the year 381 by the council of Constantinople, 
defined, under the decision of two ecumenical, or general, 
councils, the Holy Ghost as ' ' proceeding from the Father. ' ' 
This was the accepted belief of the Christendom, so called, 
of that day and for an indefinite number of years thereafter, 
but history informs us that in the fifth and sixth centuries 
more or fewer of the Spanish churches added the words 
filioque, meaning ' ' and from the Son, ' ' and were followed 
in this by most of the Gallican, or French, churches. The 
matter was discussed in the council of Gentilly, near the 
city of Paris, in the year 767. Though the Latin churches 
were generally favorable to the interpolation, the Greeks 
angrily antagonized it as being not only surreptitious but, 
doubtless, a misrepresentation of the truth. In the early 
part of the next century the dispute broke out afresh and 



32 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

so hotly that the Emperor Charlemagne was requested to 
interfere. Councils were held in France and at Rome 
itself in the presence of Pope Leo the Third. The Pope 
decided, somewhat amusingly, that whilst the words filioque 
were interpolated and ought to be omitted from the creed, 
they still spoke the truth. The final result was that the 
interpolation was retained in the Roman or western branch 
of the church, and so we have it at this day and in this 
country in Article Fifth of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
as well as in the creeds and confessions of most of the other 
churches. The Greek churches throughout the east of 
Europe and elsewhere retain the creed as delivered at Con- 
stantinople in the year 381. One of the chief grounds of 
dissension between the Greek and Roman branches of the 
Nicene profession was this same interpolation, and it helped 
largely towards their final disseverment. Thus what was 
designed for a bond of union proved a pregnant cause of 
lasting separation. 

We have not, at this distance from the era of those con- 
tentions, any fully satisfactory account of the reasons which 
influenced the Greek Nicenists in their view of confining 
the procession of the Spirit to the Father only. They 
might have thought, and it would seem justly, that as the 
Holy Ghost was announced in the gospels to have been 
the paternal originator of Christ's being, it would wear a 
very unreasonable and unscriptural appearance to declare 
that the parent proceeded from the offspring! Yet so said 
the Romanists, and so echo most of the Protestant creeds 
and churches of our freer and more enlightened day. 

It is pretty clear that this Fifth Article was prepared with 
little or no reference to the Scriptures, but with a view to 
conformity with the articles that precede it. What Christ 
was and is as to substance we have already heard upon his 
own decisive authority. He was truly a "substance," "a 
glorious body" (Philipp., 3: 21), and not a spirit in its 
accepted sense. The Holy Ghost is not substance, but 
spirit only, of which the very name gives evidence. The 
Son and the Holy Ghost cannot, therefore, be of " one 
substance. ' ' 

The Holy Ghost, being the Spirit of God himself, ne- 
cessarily partakes of God's supreme " majesty and glory." 
The Son, as the celestially dignified and glorious Lord his 
followers will ever delight to confess him, was yet seen by 
Stephen standing apart from "the glory of God." Paul 
also advertises us that when we confess Christ to be 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 33 

" Lord " (Philipp., 2:11) we must do it " to the glory of 
God the Father." 

The Sixth Article applauds the Holy Scriptures as ' ' con- 
taining all things necessary to salvation," prompting the 
inquiry, Why, then, do you frame compulsory creeds and 
formularies out of the mandates of assemblages of unin- 
spired men, tinctured with not a few ideas and notions that 
if originated at this day would consign them to general 
pity or contempt? Why paint the lily, or the rose, or 
attempt to refine pure gold, as the churches have doue in 
a religious sense times without number almost ever since 
the days of the Apostles ? The new doctrines and systems 
that have been propounded must have been to alter, either 
by addition or subtraction, the written Word of God ; in 
either case, and still more in both, the efforts were criminal, 
and the result divinely condemned in advance. 

Many things that the Nicene churches teach are neither 
read in the Scriptures nor can be honestly proved thereby ; 
they should not, therefore, be required of any man as arti- 
cles of faith, much less be thought necessary to salvation. 
Speaking of the period when the Nicene creed was framed 
under the auspices of the Emperor Constantine, the dis- 
tinguished Neander, the historian of the Christian church, 
says that ' ' with the year 325 Christian history closed, and 
Church history began." 

The Seventh Episcopal Article speaks of ' ' Christ as the 
only mediator between God and man, being both God and 
man." It is undoubtedly read in Scripture that Christ is 
the "one mediator between God and man," but in vain 
will any one seek for a single syllable that will justify 
the allegation that Christ is ' ' both God and man. ' ' The 
statement is totally unsustained. Contrariwise, the Apos- 
tle to the Gentiles distinctly testifies in his first Epistle to 
Timothy (2:5) that the "one mediator" is simply "the 
ma.71 Christ Jesus. ' ' Now it so happens that the phraseol- 
ogy of that text is peculiar, and found nowhere else in 
the whole Bible. What, then, could have possessed the 
framers of the article to hazard a statement so directly in 
contradiction of the Apostolic declaration, and at the same 
time so readily exposed? Why make an averment that 
one opening of the New Testament would disprove ? 

The phrase ' ' God-man ' ' is one of those expressions 
much in vogue among Nicenists, consisting, like "Trin- 
ity" and "Incarnation," of a mingling of the unscrip- 
tural and the impossible. Properly, then, what is meant 
by the word ' ' God-man " ? It is taken to mean a supposed 
3 



34 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

being compounded of God and man — part one and part the 
other. Where now, in point of fact, in the heavens, or the 
earth, or the waters under the earth, where in the wide 
universe outside of Nicenism or the older mythology, has 
such a prodigy been actually witnessed? From beginning 
to end of the Bible not a thought is entertained of any such 
incompatible entity, though, if there really were such, 
there would be no place from Genesis to Revelations 
where he could be more appropriately introduced than in 
ist Timothy, 2:5. Mediating between God and men, it 
might look as if he should partake of the nature of both, 
(and that is the notion of the article,) but, when quitting 
fancy, we address ourselves to truth and fact, the "one 
mediator" is by nature and revelation simply "man." 
But some may still ask, How could Christ be suited for the 
office of mediator if he did not possess a nature in common 
with both the covenanting parties, God and man? The 
answer is, That Christ's mediatorship does not rest upon 
his being part deity and part humanity, but upon that 
unblemished righteousness and holiness which link him 
to God. Not nature, but character and spirit is the bond 
of union between God and Christ. Christ's being always 
led by the Spirit of God made him the Son of God. The 
writer to the Hebrews, quoting prophetically concerning 
Christ, says : ' ' Thou hast loved righteousness and hated 
iniquity ; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with 
the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Therefore ; for that 
reason; viz., the loving righteousness and hating iniquity. 
Who does not perceive that this view is far higher and 
more ennobling than the extravagant and unscriptural 
figment of a God-man? 

The testimony of the Bible, without which we care not 
to move a step, is ample on this head, though we have only 
space for a very small part of it. In describing himself, 
Christ never claimed to be a God-man. His disciples 
and all the Jews, his contemporaries, regarded him as by 
nature a man, a "teacher come from God, for," said Nico- 
demus, "no man can do these miracles that thou doest 
except God be with him," in which sense Christ was the 
Emmanuel, or token of the divine presence. Arguing 
against the maliciously hostile Jews, Christ said of himself 
(John, 8:40): "But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath 
told you the truth which I have heard of God." On the 
memorable day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost was 
visibly vouchsafed to an extent never before or since, the 
leading Apostle, Peter, lifted up his inspired voice and 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 35 

announced to the assembly of apostles and disciples — and 
to us and the people of all time — that "Jesus of Nazareth, 
a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders 
and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye 
yourselves also know, ye have taken and by wicked hands 
have crucified and slain ; whom God hath raised up and 
made both Lord and Christ. ' ' It required no more than a 
human nature, or rather, that was exactly what was required, 
in conjunction with unsullied righteousness in heart and . 
life, to befit Jesus for a dignity surpassing all the magnates 
•of the earth, viz. , the Lord of the redeemed, here and here- 
after, and the anointed Christ of God. Into his name and 
faith three thousand of the people were then and there 
baptized. 

On an occasion not long after, Peter declared that Jesus 
was a prophet like unto Moses, whom nobody ever supposed 
to be other than a man. Still again (Acts, 4: 10 to 12) Jesus 
Christ of Nazareth is proclaimed to all the people of Israel 
as the one out of whom there can be no salvation, " for," 
said Peter, " there is none other name under heaven given 
among men whereby we must be saved." In Acts 5: 28 
Jesus is shown to have been preached and understood at 
Jerusalem by the Jewish priests and people as a man, in 
whose name and doctrine the Apostles taught. The Apostle 
Paul, when addressing the Athenians from Mars hill, de- 
clared that he by whom God will judge the world in right- 
eousness is " that man" whom God has for that purpose 
ordained. In Paul's masterly Epistle to the Romans (5: 15) 
he teaches that God's gracious gift of redemption comes 
through the medium of "one man, Jesus Christ," — not by 
reason of Christ's being God, in whole or in part, but because 
of the "righteousness" and "obedience" of that one man 
through the continual indwelling in him of the Divine 
Spirit, imparted " not by measure." It was Christ's moral 
quality, and not the impressed constitution of his nature, 
that gave him his lofty place in the counsels and purposes 
of the Most High. ' ' Since by man came death, by man 
came also the resurrection of the dead ; for as in Adam all 
die, even so in Christ, the second and spiritual Adam, 
shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: 
Christ the first fruits, afterwards they that are Chris? s at 
his coming, ' ' meaning that Christ and they that are Christ' s 
are alike human. Nor will this lofty moral excellence be 
always confined to the man Christ only, for, by the good- 
ness of God, they who are in a condition to " receive abun- 
dance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign 



2)6 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

in life by one, Jesus Christ. ' ' (Also Rev. , 3 : 21.) We there- 
fore see how very unfounded is the idea which prevails in 
Nicenist teachings, that it is " the presence of the divine 
nature in Christ's person which gives infinite worth and 
efficacy to his sacrifice," so that the question presents itself 
whether the Christ of Nicenism is not a merely imaginary 
being, and not the true Christ of the Bible, the human off- 
spring of the Spirit of God and the pure young woman of 
Nazareth? And, as a corollary, might not an unreal Christ 
involve, to a greater or less extent, an unreal Christianity? 
Professors of Nicenist doctrines seem to be generally reach- 
ing after the substance, essence, matter, or nature (otuna) in 
God and in Christ, whereby they lose the infinitely more 
profitable moral and spiritual considerations with which we 
have really almost all to do. Human investigations into 
the divine nature, as considered apart from the divine char- 
acter, must be inevitably fruitless. That divine nature is 
an infinite deep, which no human plummet can sound. Is it 
not irreverent as well as foolish to attempt, by mortal search- 
ing, to find out God ? And is it much less of a fatuity to 
allege, concerning the person of Christ, a state of things 
about which the scriptures have nothing to say except to 
contradict it ? As to who and what Christ is, we shall surely 
err if we depart from the plain and positive declarations of 
the Bible. The philosophy of his constitution must arise 
directly out of the facts vouchsafed chiefly in the gospels, 
and must not grow out of analogies hypothetically drawn 
from the order of common nature. The Spirit of God is the 
instrument of the will of God, and that will is subject to no 
analogies, but is absolutely and for ever supreme. " With 
God all things are possible." It was His will to originate 
a new creation with Christ for the "second man," the "last 
Adam," the spiritual progenitor of the everlasting age; so 
that Christ was none the less human because the Spirit of 
God, ' ' the power of the Highest, ' ' furnished his parentship. 
Whatever, from a worm to an archangel, it is the will of God 
to produce, His Spirit can originate. He willed Christ to 
be man, and a man he was. (Refer in particular to Hebrews 
5:7,8, and 9.)* 

*Paul suffered persecution because he preached "Christ crucified." 
(Gal., 5: 11.) The " offense of the cross" interfered seriously with con- 
versions to Christianity, especially from Judaism. It was a forbidding 
trial with many to pass forward and onward from Moses to Christ, with 
the indelible recollection of the latter's ignominious fate. Even before 
the crucifixion, the haughty Pharisees said, "We know that God spake 
unto Moses, but as for this 1 Jesus), we know not whence he is." Utterly 
unrighteous and unjustifiable as was the infliction of death upon the great 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 37 

There is another Nicenist phrase which is quite common, 
and is found in the Second Article, that God-the-Son (for 
it must have been a being anterior to Jesus Christ) " took 
man's nature upon him." The indulgence in language 
implying that one kind of being has taken or may take 
upon it the nature of beings of another kind, as if it were 
little more difficult than an exchange of coats or cloaks, 
may be allowed as a verbal divertissement, but cannot be 
accepted as a practical reality. It involves considerations 
beyond any human mastery. 

If it were meant to say that Christ, like ourselves, was 
a participant of human nature, there could be no objection, 
for that will be both intelligible and scriptural, especially 
if it be understood at the same time that neither Christ nor 
ourselves could possess any prior choice as to what we were 
or are to be, and the only choice in the matter lies with our 
common Maker. But Nicenism does not say that. It 
undertakes to assert that the God-the-Son of its creed, and 
not the Holy Ghost, was the male parent of Jesus; and not 
only so, but that he designedly became his own child, or, 
at all events became indissolubly united in person with his 
own child, leaving, as we have already remarked, God the 
Father quite apart and unrelated to Jesus nearer than as 
a grandparent. Familiarity with the notions of ancient 
heathen mythology may smooth the way for the reception 
of, or rather acquiescence in, transformations from divinity 
to humanity, or even to animality, but with all whose bed- 
rock of religion is Bible-doctrine, such metamorphoses pass 
for nothing. We may give no place in our minds to the 
grossness of Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, the Pagan three ~ 
nor set value on the avatars t)r incarnations of Vishnu, 
or Crishna, the most active and important of* the Hindoo 
Triad, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, yet ideas energize the 
teachings and writings of Nicenist theologians which, not 
being properly derivable from the pages of the Hebrew and 

Benefactor, for which the Jewish nation were alone responsible, it still 
wore a public and official stamp, and this had a strong effect upon numerous 
Jewish people in the succeeding age or two, keeping them from embracing 
and professing the Christian faith. We cannot but suppose that the same 
recollection carried much weight with the confluent masses of Gentiles 
•of a hundred names in the following two or three centuries, and that it 
had a repellent effect upon their minds. Without justifying, this might 
go far to account for, the adoption of the policy by certain of the cotem- 
porary Christian leaders of declaring Christ to be more than human, and 
substantially divine — lifting him, in fact, out of what he is, in the plain 
and simple Apostles' creed, into the glittering refulgence with which the 
Nicene composition surrounds him. This scheme has surely had its suffi- 
cient sway. Let us, then, return to the wiser sobriety of gospel truth. 



38 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Christian scriptures, bear hardly deniable marks of ethnic 
and, especially, Hindoo origin. 

We are told, too, that, speaking of Christ, "two whole and 
perfect natures were joined together in one person. ' ' This 
statement, when we attempt to realize its meaning, is found 
none of the easiest. Not that there is any difficulty in 
understanding how two distinct objects can be united into 
one organism, for that is common enough in the world; but 
then there is always some approach, more or less perfect, 
to equality in the two objects. In the alleged case of the 
two natures in Christ no such equality can be predicated. 
Christ's person does not appear to have exceeded the limits 
of ordinary personality, yet according to the aforesaid dogma 
that personality comprises the infinity which more than fills 
the universe with its countless millions of suns and attend- 
ing planets and satellites, far the greater part of which has 
never yet glimmered into human vision. Can infinity and 
a speck be joined together in a speck ? Astounding, if true ; 
yet, while reason is staggered, it is utterly unknown to the 
Bible. 

Neither does our knowledge of the universe, of this world, 
or of God's Word, furnish a syllable about one kind of being 
iX assuming," or joining with, the nature of another kind of 
being. Every being in the universe, we ma}' reverently 
include even the Ineffable Creator, and every one of His 
creatures, is what he or she is, either by original constitu- 
tion or by divine ordination, and that nature once appointed 
remains forever. Every something and somebody that we 
see or have knowledge of is itself, himself or herself, and 
not something or somebody else. To this effect the Apostle 
Paul, in his revelation of the last things, quite pointedly 
speaks: "All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one 
kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of 
fishes, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies 
and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the celestial is one 
and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one 
glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another 
glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star 
in glory." He refers all to God, who has given to even- 
several existence such body or constitution as it has pleased 
Him, and to every body its own proper constitution. Simi- 
larly, (Ecclesiastes, 3:14,) "I know," says the Preacher, 
" that whatsoever God doeth it sliall be forever; nothing 
can be put to it, nor anything taken from it; and God 
doeth it that man should fear before Him." A single 
thought remains: Can it be possible that whilst God has 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 39 

made so fixed and immutable the works of his hands, that 
considerable part of Himself which Nicenism claims God- 
the-Son to be should have been so subject to change as 
from one nature to become two, and to re-enter heaven 
after the date of Christ's resurrection a differently consti- 
tuted being from what he had previously been from all 
eternity ? If God the Father, God the Son, and God the 
Holy Ghost had been always equal before, that equality 
must have been disturbed when the ' ' two whole and perfect 
natures were joined together in the one person" of God- 
the-Son. Deity then comprehended two natures where 
previously it had but one. It was no longer "one sub- 
stance. ' ' 

The Eighth Episcopal Article declareth after this wise, 
that "The Nicene creed and that which is commonly called 
the Apostles' creed ought thoroughly to be received and 
believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants 
of Holy Scripture." 

Our Saviour, who well knew what was in man, hesitated 
not to strike at that tendency which is apt to pervade men 
in high ecclesiastical authority to control the minds of the 
common people by proposing codes and systems favorable 
to their own views and purposes. He quotes the prophet 
Isaiah as speaking for God against such, and saying (Mark, 
7:6 to 13) "In vain do they worship me, teaching for 
doctrines the commandments of men." Now, if the Old 
and New Testaments were deficient in lessons that teach 
what is requisite for human faith and practice, there might 
be justifying reasons why the want should be supplied from 
human sources, but since ' ' all scripture given by inspira- 
tion of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for cor- 
rection and instruction in righteousness, to the end that the 
man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all 
good works," it would appear to, be neither necessary nor 
wise to leave those holy, safe, and sufficient precincts for 
the superfluous devices of men. Such devices, notwith- 
standing any pretensions they might set up, may be intended 
rather to supersede than to assist scripture, — which, by the 
way, can work its course without such assistance. The 
Nicene creed, for which the Church of England and her 
daughter, the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United 
States, testify in terms of the strongest commendation, 
Avas not constructed till one-quarter of the fourth century 
after Christ had passed away. It was not even then finished 
but was put upon the anvil of the council or synod of 
Constantinople over fifty years after, or within twenty years 



40 NAZARETH AGAINST NICK. 

of the beginning of the fifth century, and there received 
its finishing stroke, except, that in order to get it as now 
read in the prayer books, it was made to carry an interpo- 
lation fabricated by some of the churches of Spain, and 
then continued by the whole Latin Church, though always 
resisted by the Greek and Eastern churches. The Nicene 
creed takes its name from the place of its birth at Nicaea, 
or Nice, in Bithynia, not far from the city of Constanti- 
nople, out of an assembly of three hundred and eighteen 
bishops sent on a call from the Roman Emperor Constan- 
tine to meet there in his palace in the year 325. The 
especial object of the meeting was to attempt a settlement 
of the differences that had arisen in the Church of Alex- 
andria, in Egypt, between two of its clergy, Athanasius 
and Arius, as to the nature and dignity of Christ. Athana- 
sius contended for the deity of Christ as being equal to 
the deity of the Father; Arius held that while Christ was 
the most distinguished and glorious of all derived beings, 
far above angels and archangels, he was still second to the 
Father from whom he had sprung. Our information rela- 
tive to the behavior of the members and the general cir- 
cumstances of the council is but meagre, yet enough seems 
to be known to show that the proceedings were considerably 
tumultuous and disorderly, with no little violence and 
cruelty in its decisions, which were unfavorable to Arius 
and his friends. For differing with the majority they were 
condemned to banishment, and threatened with death in 
case they continued to promulgate their opinions. 

Instead of referring for a right settlement of the contro- 
versy to the teachings of the Word of God in the Bible, 
the council undertook to erect a standard of its own in the 
shape of an authoritative creed. In constructing this it 
availed itself of the long-enjoyed popularity of a com- 
pendious confession of Christian faith, called the Apostles' 
creed, though perhaps not with absolute accuracy. The 
council took the outline of this time-honored summary as 
the pattern for its own; but by filling in with garish and 
extravagant expressions, the new product came forth rather 
a travesty and perversion. If we read the Apostles' creed 
as the Nicene council found it, and compare it with the 
subsequent Nicence production, the truth of this will ap- 
pear. The Apostles' creed originally ran thus : "I believe 
in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ his only 
Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born 
of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was 
crucified and buried : the third dav he rose from the dead. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 41 

He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of 
the Father ; from thence he shall come to judge the quick 
and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy 
church, the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the 
body. Amen." 

The Nicene creed is after this wise : 

"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of 
heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible ; 

"And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son 
of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds ; God of 
God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not 
made, being of one substance with the Father ; by whom 
all things were made ; who, for us men and our salvation 
came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy 
Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man, and was 
crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and 
was buried ; and the third day he rose again, according to 
the scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on 
the right hand of the Father ; and he shall come again 
with glory to judge both the quick and the dead ; whose 
kingdom shall have no end. 

' 'And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of 
life ; who proceedeth from the Father ; who with the Father 
and Son together is worshipped and glorified ; who spake 
by the prophets. And I believe one Catholic and Apos- 
tolic Church. I acknowledge" one baptism for the remis- 
sion of sins ; and I look for the resurrection of the dead 
and the life of the world to come. Amen. " 

It will be noticed that the Apostles' creed is a plain, 
concise statement of the principal articles of the Christian's 
faith, no one of which can be dispensed with. Some have 
supposed, and with probability, that it was constructed for 
use in baptisms as an expansion and exposition of Christ's 
purpose in the command Matt, 2.8:19, which was a quite 
proper and congenial duty for Apostles to perform. There 
is nothing in the creed which is out of conformity with the 
preaching and writings of the Apostles. We may therefore 
accept its several particulars as authentic truths, and the 
creed as a whole for satisfactory testimony relative to what 
was and what was not the belief of the Apostles themselves. 
It evidently comprises the general, that is to say, the 
catholic, belief for the most of all the time from the Apos- 
tolic era in the first century to a good distance into the 
fourth century, or almost three hundred years. Nicenist 
authority reports that what was called ' ' Monarchianism ' ' 
" was the ruling principle" of the popular faith, and that 



42 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

it held "vigorously and formally to the unity of God," 
even though there might be wide differences upon other 
points. 

From expressions dropped by prominent parties in those 
ages the inference is just that they felt it necessary to have 
some other foundation than the Bible and the Apostles 1 
creed for the new faith they had devised. Thus Athana- 
sius, the champion and chief constructor, declared that the 
Homoonsion, or Trinity, "was the only true foundation 
for the absoluteness of the Christian religion." And the 
council of Ephesus, convened by the Emperor Theodosius 
the Second, and held in A. D. 449, looked upon the 
"Nicene creed as the only and immutable foundation of 
orthodox doctrine;" in other words, it looked upon the 
gaudy epithets which the council of Nice had foisted into 
the frame-work imitated from the Apostles' creed as the 
"only foundation of orthodox doctrine. " To be sure, this 
council of Ephesus was not a remarkably reputable body 
as to order and decency of behavior, for it got the title 
of the " Robber Council " from the scandalous and even 
murderous scenes presented there; yet its loyalty to "or- 
thodoxy," as x\thanasianism or Nicenism delights to be 
called, was never questioned. 

The Apostles' creed follows the gospels in ascribing the 
origin of Christ's being to the miraculous agency of the 
Holy Ghost at a definite point of time, being utterly silent, 
like the gospels, about any pre-existence of either Christ's 
body, soul, or spirit. The Nicene creed, on the other hand, 
asserts Christ to have been "begotten of the Father before 
all worlds," that is, from all eternity, which, as there is no 
divinely authenticated history of what took place " before 
all worlds," the Nicene assembly promulgated conjectur- 
ally, or as guess-work, upon their own responsibility. 

The x\postles' creed adheres to the New Testament in 
naming Christ as "Lord," but the Nicene outstrips all 
records and lifts Jesus higher than to the highest honors 
of deity, calling Him "God of God," "Light of Light," 
"very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one 
substance with the Father" — all upon its own dogmatic 
assertion. 

The Nicene next says that "Christ came down from 
heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin 
Mary, and was made man." But this is not consonant with 
the Second Article of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
which latter does not include any agency of the Holy Ghost 
in producing the incarnation, needing no other interposition 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 43 

than that of God-the-Son. It must be confessed that the 
aid of the Holy Ghost, whilst God-the-Son is present ' ' in 
his whole and perfect nature," appears to be entirely 
superfluous; besides which, no explanation is furnished of 
the procedure whereby the Holy Ghost effects by his own 
action on the person of Mary an incarnation of a third 
object, God-the-Son, distinct from both. There certainly 
seems to be one paternal agent too many, producing a very 
complicated result upon the statement in the creed. From 
all this the Apostles' creed stands clear. 

Alluding to Christ's kingdom, the Nicene creed says: 
"Whose kingdom shall have no end." It is presumed 
that the creed here refers to Christ's mediatorial kingdom. 
If that be so, a greater than Athanasius, speaking by the 
Holy Ghost, states that after certain happenings, "then 
cometh the end, when Christ shall have delivered up the 
kingdom to God, that is, the Father; when he shall have 
put down all rule and all authority and power; for he 
must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. 
But when he saith all things are put under him, it is 
manifest that He is excepted who did put all things under 
him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, 
then shall the Son also himself be subject unto Him that 
put all things under him, that God may be all in all. 
Christ's mediatorial kingdom, very durable as it will most 
likely be, will therefore, nevertheless, ' ' have an end. ' ' 

If the Nicene had stated that in the redeemed and per- 
fected world, which is to follow the present probationary 
state, the Lord Jesus would be king over the whole earth 
for ever and ever, it would have asserted a profound Scrip- 
ture doctrine and undoubted truth. Christ will be Lord 
and king forever over this restituted globe; vice-gerent 
under the One God of the universe. 

In the second paragraph of the creed as generally printed, 
it is read that the Holy Ghost ' ' proceedeth from the Father 
and the Son. ' ' For the last three words the Nicene council 
is not responsible, as before shown. They were first 
appended by some of the Spanish churches, which seem to 
have had an early bias for extravagant and unscriptural 
notions, and have held to them ever since. 

So much for the Nicene creed; what have Nicenist 
writers testified about its authors ? ' ' The council was 
gathered at the instance of the Emperor Constantine, who 
was much annoyed and puzzled by the discussions of the 
Christians among his subjects, by their perpetual squabbles 
about doctrines, and the fanatical hatreds thereby engen- 



44 NAZARETH AGAIXST NICE. 

dered. In the Roman Empire the most different religions 
lived peacefully beside each other, and here was a religion 
which could not live in peace with itself. For political 
reasons, however, unity and harmony were necessary, and 
in A. D. 325 the emperor convened a council at Nice to 
settle the dispute between Athanasius and Alexander on 
the one hand and Arius and his followers of the same city 
on the other. The council consisted of 318 bishops, selected 
by their superiors, the metropolitans and patriarchs, out 
of about 1900 bishops then in the empire. Its president 
was Hosius of Corduba, in Spain, but the emperor generally 
attended the sessions in person. It was the first time that 
the Christian church and the Roman state met each other 
face to face, and the impression was very deep on both sides. 
When the emperor stood there, among those 318 bishops, 
tall, clad in purple and jewels, with his peculiarly haughty 
and sombre mien, he felt disgusted at those coarse and 
cringing creatures who one moment scrambled sportively 
around him to snatch up a bit of his munificence, and the 
next moment flew madly into each other's faces for some 
incomprehensible mystery. The result of the council was, 
as before intimated, unfavorable to Arius and his friends, 
who would not consent to acknowledge that the Son was 
Omo-ousios, or of the same identical substance or material 
with the Father ; though a portion of them were willing 
to grant that he was Omoi-ousios, or of a similar substance. 
The emperor, appearing much under the influence of 
Hosius, who adhered to the Athanasian party, decreed that 
all must comply with the decision of the majority, and 
henceforth believe and teach the creed as it had been drawn 
up, or submit to penal consequences, banishment and death. 
Arius refused, and was banished to Illyria, (the Botany Bay 
of those times,) his books were burnt, and his fellow- 
believers branded as enemies to Christianity. There was 
in the creed, as it came from the council, an anathema or 
condemnatory sentence. This anathema Eusebius of Nico- 
media and Theognis of Nicaea would not sign. They 
were, therefore, deposed from their bishoprics and ban- 
ished. Two Egyptian bishops, Theonas and Secundus, 
also refused to subscribe, and were sent to Illyria. 

"After the council of Nice, Constantine conversed more 
and more frequently and intimately with the bishops, and 
his interest in Christianity grew with his years. Through 
his close intimacy with Eusebius, bishop of Cesarea, and 
the well-known historian of the early Christian church, 
Constantine was induced, about the year 328, to recall 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 45 

Alius from banishment and to order his restoration to the 
Church of Alexandria. But this was strenuously resisted 
by Athanasius, who was, in consequence, himself banished 
to Gaul, or France, whilst Arius and his party were rein- 
stated and received to the communion of the Church. The 
bulk, however, of the Christian people of Alexandria were 
partisans of Athanasius, and refused Arius a place among 
the presbyters, when in 336, Arius having had his faith 
approved by the synod of Jerusalem and one other city, 
the emperor invited him to Constantinople, and issued an 
'order to Alexander, the bishop of that city, to admit him 
to his communion. 

' ' On the Sunday appointed for the formal and full admis- 
sion of Arius a procession was formed between the imperial 
palace and the church of the Apostles. In this procession 
the aged Arius, now in his 8oth year, took his place, 
but when on the way was suddenly seized with an illness 
and compelled to step aside. Very soon a copious hem- 
orrhage supervened; the smaller intestines and some parts 
of the liver and spleen passed from him, and death -quickly 
closed the scene. His private and moral character were 
unimpeachable, but his antagonists declared his death to 
have been a judgment from heaven, whilst his friends re- 
garded it as the result of poison administered by or through 
his sectarian foes. If poison, it must have been virulent in 
kind and probably large in amount. Athanasius is reported, 
to have been among those who declared the death of Arius 
due to the special judgment of heaven. The conclusion of 
modern thought has been that Arius fell ' a victim to the 
resentment of his enemies, and was destroyed by poison, or 
some such violent method.' " 

With regard to Constantine, he finally went over to the 
Arian opinions and was baptized not long before his death 
by the Arian bishop of Nicomedia. A Nicenist author of 
the present day remarks that Constantine' s ' ' conversion 
from Paganism to Christianity was a change of policy 
rather than of moral character. Long after that event he 
killed his son Crispus, his second wife, several other of 
his relatives and some of his most intimate friends, in 
passionate resentment of some fancied infringement of his 
rights. In his relation to Christianity he was cool, cal- 
culating, always bent upon the practically useful, always 
regarding the practically possible. He retained the office 
and title of Pontifex Maximus to the last, and did not 
receive Christian baptism until he felt death close upon 
him. He kept Pagans in the highest positions in his imme- 



46 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

diate surroundings, and forbade anything which might 
look like an encroachment of Christianity upon Paganism. 
With Christianity, not as a power of this world, he hardly 
ever came to understand it." 

Returning now to the Eighth Article, we cannot but 
express surprise that two creeds, essentially antagonistic, 
should be declared provable " by most certain warrants of 
Holy Scripture." In the English Episcopal church serv- 
ice there is a third creed much longer and more elaborately 
wrought out than the Nicene, but to the same general 
effect. It goes by the name of the Athanasian creed, but* 
is not rightly so called, for Athanasius never saw or heard 
of it. This creed was not in existence till some hundreds 
of years after the time of Athanasius. It was first written 
in Latin, whereas Athanasius spoke and wrote in Greek, 
and the methods of expression are not his. Some thirty- 
years ago this creed was made the subject of earnest dis- 
cussion in England, from which the conclusion seemed to 
be that the creed could not be traced higher up than the 
ninth century. Hilary, a bishop of Arclate, or Aries, in 
the southeast of France, a Nicene champion, was long 
thought to have been its author, but he seems to have 
lived much too early. The creed was not adopted at Rome 
till the middle of the tenth century. Its putative author, 
Athanasius, rightly called by his Nicenist disciples "the 
father of orthodoxy," was born a year or two before the 
beginning of the fourth century. He appears to have 
been a man of strong, overbearing temper, extremely tena- 
cious of any purpose he had in view, eloquent and able, and 
endowed with popular talents which he exerted with effect 
among his own people. He suffered persecutions as he 
also countenanced them, but showed no excess of the milk 
of human kindness. He is described by a modern professor 
of his doctrines as "a man of one idea and one passion — 
the eternal divinity of Christ — which he considered the 
corner-stone of the Christian system." Taking his dis- 
ciples at their word, it results that so-called "orthodoxy," 
the synonym of Nicenism, could not have originated till 
considerably within the fourth century after Christ. 
Thenceforward the church and her bishops triumphed 
over Christ and his Apostles for many following centuries. 

We cannot wonder, then, that the simple scriptural 
teachings of the Apostles' creed were far too tame and 
unsophisticated for the demands of the high-strung theology 
abetted by Athanasius, nor that his anient appetite craved 
some such above-proof results as he and his co-workers 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 47 

produced out of the laboratory at Nice. He is even 
imperious in his requirements upon the divine nature, for 
he considers that ' ' the redemption and salvation of man 
demand that God has not only revealed himself to man 
through Christ, but has become man in Christ, — has been 
incarnated." Thus again it is seen how prone Gentile 
blood was to drop down into low and unworthy views of 
the divine nature. They inherited a propensity for believ- 
ing in the metamorphosis of deity into humanity, and 
some of them — the Egyptians, for instance, of and among 
whom Athanasius was born — of deity into animality. 
Such, too, were the Hindoos with their "avatars" or in- 
carnations of their gods, and especially of Vishnu, the 
second in the Hindoo triad. The Jews, on the contrary, 
profiting by their disciplinary sojourn in Babylon, were 
free from this taint. There were those of them that had 
their cabala full of grotesque and absurd fictions enough, 
yet they always maintained the most reverent distinction 
between the nature of the Uncreate and of the mortal. 
Bven the Samaritans, close neighbors as they were of the 
Jews, had permitted so much idolatrous mixture into their 
religious ideas and services that the Saviour pronounced 
them to be "worshippers of they knew not what," in con- 
trast with his own Jewish fellow-countrymen who did 
"know what they worshipped," and from among whom 
* ' salvation ' ' was to arise. 

The Fifteenth Article is as follows, so far as we can con- 
sider it : "Christ, in the truth of our nature, was made like 
unto us in all things, sin only excepted, from which he was 
clearly void both in his flesh and in his spirit. He came 
to be a lamb without spot, who, by the sacrifice of himself, 
once made, should take away the sins of the world ; and 
sin (as St. John saith) was not in him." 

Passing over the verbal discrepancy between this article 
and the Nicene creed — the one saying that Christ was 
" made " and the other that he was " begotten, not made " 
— we remark, that when similarity subsists between two 
objects, or sets of objects, each is like the other. If Christ 
was made like unto us in all things, sin only except," we 
are " made like unto Christ in all things " except as to sin. 
How does this agree with what is told us in the first, sec- 
ond, and other articles ? It is therein declared that Christ 
is a person, consisting of ' ' two whole and perfect natures, 
joined together never to be divided," and that one of these 
natures is " very God." Are we, as men, similarly com- 
posed of two distinct natures ? Who, among the best of 



48 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

mankind, will pretend to be, in part, " very God/' and so 
like unto Christ? Of course, nobody. Thus the alleged 
" likeness " fails at once, and in a most important respect, 
for "godhead" and "manhood" are essentially dissimilar. 
We are human only. Christ, say Nicenists, is both divine 
and human. The two are, therefore, on Nicene principles, 
extremely dissimilar — as dissimilar as they can be. The 
articles necessarily become self-contradictory. If, now, 
moreover, to the dissimilarity between Christ and man- 
kind, (Nicenely speaking,) in that Christ is part divine 
and man is not, there be added the further very essential 
dissimilarity affecting both of Christ's natures, the result is 
that Christ is "like unto us" in nothing of real import- 
ance, instead of " in all things. " It incidentally occurs to 
be remarked, just here, that if Christ was " made " sinless, 
his excellence therein was not spontaneous, and was in so 
far defective in merit, for he merely obeyed the law of his 
nature. He could not avoid being good. His sinlessness 
was automatic, and the merit of it goes back to his Maker. 
The Fifteenth Article further says that Christ " came to 
be a lamb without spot," leaving it in doubt whether he 
came of his own will and motion, or was sent by another. 
The article appears to preponderate towards the former 
meaning, for it adds, as the object of his coming, that he 
" should, by the sacrifice of himself once made, take away 
the sins of the world." Upon this point Christ's own testi- 
mony is that he ' ' came not of himself, but was sent by God. ' ' 
(Luke, 7: 28 and 29.) What Christ finally turned out to be 
lie undoubtedly came to be, but he was not the author of his 
mission. That author was God his Father. Had Christ 
been the author of his own mission, his shrinking, though 
only momentary, from before the terrors which confronted 
him, (Matthew, 26:39; Mark, 14: 35^41; Luke, 22: 42 to 44,) 
besides testifying to an inward frailty, would have betrayed 
a great falling-off in the designer of the more than nobly 
gigantic undertaking of a self-sacrifice for the sins of the 
world. It might have subjected him to the scorn of the 
universe. But Christ has never encountered the world's 
scorn ; on the contrary, the admiration, wonder, and praise 
of all mankind. And this has proceeded upon the under- 
standing that Christ was not carrying out a design of his 
own, but was obeying to the letter the sovereign mandate 
of his heavenly Father. Christ did not send himself. ^Luke, 

4: 43-) 

But there is another aspect of the case which is of par- 
amount concern : The Holy Ghost, speaking through the 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 49 

mind and pen of the Apostle Paul, says (Heb., 4: 15) that 
' ' we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with 
the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted 
as we are, yet without sin. ' ' Nicenism says that this high 
priest is the God-man, part God, who, according to the 
Apostle James, ' ' cannot be tempted of evil ; ' ' and part 
man, who, says Nicenism, was ' ' made clearly void of sin 
both in the flesh and spirit, ' ' that is to say, the God-man 
was invulnerably protected ; for as God he was untemptable ; 
as man, impeccable. At what point, then, could he be so 
tempted as to be put in danger ? Where in the close tex- 
ture of his impregnability could he be " touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities so as to be in all points tempted 
as we are " ? Through what crevice, suture, or spot could 
the keen and subtle apex of the tempter's spear impinge 
upon his sense? The God-man had no such crevice or 
opening ; he was, therefore, untouched. Suppose for a 
moment that Adam and Eve had been so well defended; 
we have no reason to think they would ever have fallen. 

Now, was such a being as the God-man a fair and suitable 
pattern or exemplar for tried, tempted, and exposed human- 
ity, open to the more or less fierce assaults of the world, 
the flesh and the devil? Could there, in truth, be a being 
less fit and fair? Match a cripple, lame from birth and 
afterwards covered with festering sores, to contend for the 
prize of swiftness with a Dexter or Maud S, under the 
certainty in case of defeat of eternal damnation ; you would 
have an equally just and righteous case of probation. 
If the God-man is set before us as an example to imitate, 
how could the best among us ever hope, not to equal, 
indeed, but to come within sight of him? Does such a 
being as the Nicenist God-man answer to the description 
in the Hebrews? He does not, but is essentially different. 
His innate, inherited perfection could not be touched with 
the feeling of human frailty so as to be affected by it as we 
are. If such an exemplar were offered us he would operate 
as a discouragement ; the wisdom and justice of God would 
be open to arraignment, and the impossibility of imitating 
him would tend to justify failure and discourage efforts to 
be virtuous. 

We conclude, then, ■ that Jesus, the Christ of the New 
Testament, was not a God-man, in the Nicene sense. The 
appendage of the godhead constitutes the disqualification 
of the latter. It puts him out of the reach of human imita- 
tion and sympathy, for he would not be a proper subject 
for probation. Before starting in the race he would be 
4 



50 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

already at the goal. The indispensable elements in a truly 
just exemplar must be the possibility of his going wrong 
joined with a mightier inward disposition to keep right. 
For this there must be a firm faith in and reliance upon 
God as Supreme lawgiver. This element must be in the 
soul either by intuition, or education, or direct gift. In 
due time there come the winds and storms of temptation 
to test its fixedness and strength, with the result either of 
overthrowing or of newly validating and fitting it for higher 
services and possibly more violent strains and endurance. 

In what has been herein freely stated there will be nothing 
to ground an inference that Christ is regarded as a sinner 
such as we are, or a sinner at all. That he was sinless 
whilst most powerfully and severely tempted, constitutes 
one of the most valuable points of the real Christian faith. 
And it most deeply interests us to ask the reason for this. 
That reason lies in the fact that Christ kept the Holy 
Spirit of his Father perpetually resident in his soul, so as 
to be always under its guiding influence. When about to 
encounter the arch-enemy in that conflict in the wilderness 
he went " full of the Holy Ghost." He was " led by the 
Spirit ;" yes, " driven " by it. After the struggle was over, 
Jesus " returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee," 
and in his memorable first sermon at Nazareth he announced 
that ' ' the Spirit of the Lord was upon him. ' ' So, through- 
out his whole life on earth, his body was a veritable temple 
of the Holy Ghost. On " the day on which he was taken 
up to heaven, after his resurrection, he gave command- 
ments unto his Apostles through the Holy Ghost," prom- 
ising them that best of gratuities, that they too should 
"be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." 
And even the ' ' Revelation which God gave unto him ' ' 
went forth unto the churches of Asia through the ' ' say- 
ings " of that "Spirit" which proceeded eternallv from 
the Father. 

As with Christ, so with his Apostles. When they first 
went forth they announced the " pouring out of the Spirit 
upon all flesh ' ' that inappreciable ' ' gift of the Holy Ghost. ' ' 
When Peter, the leader of the Apostles, spoke to the rulers 
of the people, he was "filled with the Holy Ghost," and so 
were all the "multitude of them that believed." (Acts, 4: 
31.) Stephen, the first Christian martyr, "a man full of 
faith and the Holy Ghost, ' ' looked up thereby steadfastly 
into heaven and there beheld the glory of God, and Jesus 
standing on the right hand of God. 

Here, then, is the great secret by which erring and sinful 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 5 1 

humanity may become " like unto Christ." Besides a sin- 
cere and earnest desire to get the better of temptation to 
sin, and a hearty exertion of our own powers and opportu- 
nities to evade its assaults, there will be prayer and suppli- 
cation for the most helpful aid of that Holy Spirit which 
was ever present with the Lord Jesus. There is an inter- 
esting recital of the operation of the Spirit in the tenth 
chapter of the first book of Samuel. One no better, we may 
suppose, than the general run of men, was suddenly changed 
in heart and transformed into another man. Saul had been 
instructed by the old prophet Samuel to do certain things. 
He obeyed, and the Scripture says, " that when Saul had 
turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him another 
heart, and all those signs came to pass that day. And when 
they came thither to the hill, behold a company of prophets 
met him, and the Spirit of God. came upon him, and he pro- 
phesied among them. " It is not to be thought that in all, 
or perhaps in any, modern cases consequences of obedience 
to whatever is known to be right will be thus sudden and 
complete, yet God is as much present and just as near to 
every single one of us as he was to Saul. And faith and 
trust in God will, sooner or later, remove all mountains of 
difficulty and obstruction. Let us, then, "come boldly unto 
the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace 
to help in time of need, ' ' and be filled with the Holy Ghost. 
"Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find; knock 
and it shall be opened unto you," for God giveth the Holy 
Spirit to them that in sincerity ask Him. To Christ, in- 
deed, He gave it ' ' not by measure. ' ' 

The Nicene doctrines require us to acknowledge that the 
Lord Jesus Christ is ' ' very and eternal God ' ' and equal 
partaker with his Father of supreme divinity and glory. 
How then will it sound to reverent ears to hear the relation 
of a struggle, contest, or conflict between the ' ' very and 
eternal God ' ' on the one part, and Satan, the arch-fiend, 
on the other, lasting many days in the wilderness ? But 
we proceed. 

Two points suggest themselves in connection with the 
topics of the Fifteenth Article which need to be spoken of 
before closing. The first is to ask whether, on the suppo- 
sition of Christ's inherent, and therefore involuntary, 
sinlessness and impeccability, the temptation in the wilder- 
ness would not lose most, if not the whole, of its genuine- 
ness and value ? If Christ was untemptable as God and 
impeccable as man, was not the scriptural account of the 
conflict between him and Satan a mere illusory show, 



52 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

somewhat like what is called "a sham battle"? Against 
an opponent so panoplied as Christ is represented to have 
been, Satan's antagonism could amount to nothing. Just 
as much was known of the event before it occurred as 
afterwards, for Satan was no match for a combination of 
absolute perfection and impregnable sinlessness. Most 
• surely, then, the Nicenist theory is inconsistent with the 
letter and spirit of the gospel history of Christ's temptation 
in the wilderness. 

If, however, secondly, setting Nicenism aside, the conflict 
be regarded in the light of Christ's potential failure, it 
becomes a topic fraught with the most interesting moral 
and religious considerations. By his example through 
that successful struggle he taught mankind the inexpress- 
ible value of what we may designate muscular spirituality, 
or in all cases and to the last extremity grasping the prin- 
ciple of allegiance to the word and will of God. In those 
trying moments Christ's memory carried him back to those 
pithy commands in the book of Deuteronomy, delivered 
almost fifteen hundred years before to the Israel itish people 
when about to be established in the promised possession. 
They were guides for Israel ; they were guides for Christ ; 
they are guides for us and for the people of all times. 

Let us now transfer our thoughts to that other scene of 
dread temptation a little before the close of the Saviour's 
sojourn upon the earth. His temptation was then through 
and through to the basis of his soul and being. Again he 
overcame; and why? Because of his loving faith in God. 
Even the unregenerate bystanders and witnesses of his 
passion saw and understood, at least in its outline, the active 
principle in the spirit of Christ. Said they, " He trusted 
in God." This unfailing trust was maintained by the 
steady indwelling of the Holy Ghost, that perpetual com- 
panion, Christ's solace and stay. All his life on earth it 
was with him, save perhaps during those anguished mo- 
ments, "about the ninth hour," when he cried aloud with 
all the force his overtaxed nature could command, "My 
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Perhaps, 
for we would not dogmatize, that visiting spirit was tem- 
porarily withdrawn, and Christ was left, as to his own 
apprehension he never had been before, entirely alone. 
Blessed be God, those moments of bereavement were not 
many, and Christ had become inherently strong. 

In the earlier scenes of this last and sorest trial Christ's 
thoughts were not concentrated upon himself alone; they 
were shared by the best interests of his disciples. Though, 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 53 

in the consciousness of his being human, and therefore 
subject to temptation, he prayed most earnestly that the 
awful cup of bitter trial might be removed from him, 
•yet, whilst the boiling waters of affliction were surging 
around him, he laid his hand upon the rock of his rest 
in God, that loving rest, and then exclaimed, "Neverthe- 
less, not my will, but Thine, be done." At Gethsemane 
he imparted to his disciples a knowledge of the key by 
which alone they could escape from the moral and spiritual 
perils that environed them. "Pray," said he, " that ye 
enter not into temptation." Borne down by the strain 
upon their physical organization with weariness and sleep, 
they required again the admonition, "Watch and pray that 
ye enter not into temptation. ' ' He propounded to them 
what he exercised himself, and when the agony was at the 
direst his only resort was still more earnest prayer! Once 
more he urged upon his disciples the sorrowing question, 
' ' Why sleep ye ? Rise and pray, lest ye enter into tempta- 
tion." 

During all this scene of unparalleled exigency and trial 
Christ fell not back upon the help of any deity indissolubly 
joined to him in the same person as "very and eternal 
God. ' ' He seems to have known of no such partner of his 
being, who, if he existed at all, must have been infinitely 
near him, the half of his very soul. Such an existence 
then, Christ, at the precise point and critical instant of his 
necessity, completely ignores, and confines his petitions to 
his Father alone. Why direct his cries and prayers to the 
God in heaven if there were a part of himself, so "joined to 
him as never to be divided," a God who was that Father's 
equal in power and every other divine attribute ? Would 
it not involve a slight, a disrespect, an indignity towards 
that divine partner not to be expected of one so perfect and 
exact in the discharge of every, the slightest, demand upon 
him as Christ always was? Can there be more than one 
satisfactory answer to these queries, viz. , that Christ was not 
joined in his nature with any divinity, and that he knew of 
no divinity in the universe save the One God, his Father, 
alone ? 

Last scene of all, the dying Saviour cries, " Father, into 
Thy hands I commend my spirit," and gave up the ghost. 
He spoke of but one spirit ; yet Nicenism, tells us of two 
natures in him, each "whole and perfect," requiring a 
spirit to each, and therefore two spirits for both. This is 
a great discrepancy. Who is right — the Saviour or Atha- 
nasius ? 



54 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Inasmuch as the true Christian faith comprises an ac- 
knowledgment of the origination of Christ's body through 
the influence of the Divine Spirit taking the place of a 
human father, we are the farthest possible from denying 
that a very great advantage to Jesus himself, and to man- 
kind as his beneficiaries, accrued therefrom. Untainted 
by the contamination of a long line of more or less sinning 
progenitors — as he would have been with the honest 
Joseph for a father — Christ was thus the first and founder 
of a new creation, fresh and pure from the being of God 
himself. The Divine Spirit having assumed the relation 
of an earthly father, it follows that Jesus, his direct off- 
spring, could be no other than a "begotten son;" and 
because he was the only such offspring, he was unavoidably 
the "only-begotten Son of God." Then, as the child of 
the Holy Ghost, Christ was the first of a spiritual creation, 
as Adam was the first of the material creation ; whence 
the exact propriety of Paul's reference to Christ as the 
" last Adam, a quickening spirit." 

Now, then, there are within the scope of our cognizance 
two conditions of being — a material, derived from the first 
Adam ; a spiritual, of which, on earth, Jesus Christ was the 
fountain or head. 

Moreover, the material race of beings, having sinned and 
come short of the glory of God by reason of their disobe- 
dience to His will and law, fell obnoxious to the sentence 
against such, and so subject unto death, the advertised 
penalty for sin. On the other hand, the spiritual creation, 
through the obedience of its founder and head under every 
circumstance of trial and temptation, did, in his person, 
win its way through sorrow, suffering, and temporal death 
to life everlasting in glory ineffable. 

What, then, did God for the race of Adam in bringing 
into existence such a one as Jesus Christ? God thereby 
gave the race of Adam an opportunity of leaving a con- 
dition terminating in sin and death, and of becoming 
engrafted into a state the tendency and end of which are 
holiness and life eternal. " For as in Adam all die, even 
so in Christ shall all be made alive." And, not to forestall 
what may properly follow hereafter, the entirely simple and 
rational way to this is to turn the back upon Adam and 
his propensities, and to take upon us the ideas and princi- 
ples of Christ, or, as the scripture expresses it, to have 
' ' repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

This process of leaving Adam and enlisting under Christ 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 55 

is suitably denominated by Christ a "new birth," for all 
who become subjects to it practically enter a new world, 
with new prospects, new aims, new hopes, new fears, new 
affections, new dislikes, new associates ; in a word, there 
are to them a new heaven and a new earth. ' ' If any man ' ' 
says the Apostle "be in Christ, he is a new creature ; old 
things are passed away ; behold all things are become new. " 
This change from the spiritual dominion of sin and Satan 
is also called a "deliverance from the power of darkness, 
and a translation into the kingdom of God's dear Son." 

In John 3: 2 Nicodemus freely acknowledged the di- 
vinity of the source of Christ's wonder-working power, 
"for," said he to Christ, "no man can do these miracles 
that thou doest except God be with him. ' ' Jesus offered 
no objection to this admission, but indicated that there was 
something beyond miracle-working, namely, dwelling in 
the kingdom of God, to which access could be gained only 
by a new birth of the spiritual part of man. Jesus gave 
Nicodemus to understand that he, the Son of man, was not 
only "a teacher come from God," or heaven, but was a 
dweller ' ' in heaven, ' ' or the kingdom of God. 

The notion which mistakingly prevailed in the latter 
part of the second century and during the succeeding cen- 
turies down to the present moment, that because Christ 
was truly called the ' ' begotten Son of God, ' ' he was, there- 
fore, and necessarily, constituted of the same substance, 
essence, or material as God himself, arose from the measur- 
ing of heavenly things by earthly ideas. Reading in the 
Bible of Christ's great exaltation and glory, it has been 
assumed by hasty inference that his nature must be greatly 
superior to the nature of men in general ; in fact, nothing 
inferior to the nature of God himself. But this is erroneous. 
In Christ we behold human nature elevated to its true, its 
best condition. And that is exceedingly high in the scale 
of the universe, for it is made in the image of God. That 
image Christ always retained unsullied and unimpaired. 
The Epistle to the Hebrews places this very important 
matter in a just light. Christ, the Son of God, is therein 
described as God' s appointed heir of all things ; the bright- 
ness of God's glory and the express image of his person ; 
more distinguished than the angels proportionately to the 
higher name than theirs which he has inherited, for be- 
sides that God never called an angel "Son," as He did 
Christ ; He commanded the angels, when He brought 
Christ into the world, to be prostrate as they should to a 
Son of the Most High. And that world to come God has 



56 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

not subjected to the rule of angels, but to Jesus, who. 
though temporarily inferior to the angels because of his 
death, is now crowned with glory and honor, and become 
the captain of the salvation of many sons, also brought to 
glory. These "sons" Christ is not ashamed to call his 
"brethren," being like him, men, partakers of human 
flesh and blood, and framed in the image of God. This 
consists with what the martyr Stephen saw in heaven, 
namely, "Jesus, the Son of man, standing on the right 
hand of God." At the very outset of Christ's career he 
told Nathauael and Philip that they should "see the angels 
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." 
Thus we may estimate the exceeding loftiness of a perfect 
manhood dwelling in the peace of God. 

The physiological circumstances of the generation of 
Jesus Christ, about which the ' ' early fathers, ' ' and a great 
many since them, have wonderfully busied themselves, God 
has never seen fit to reveal — not even, perhaps, to arch- 
angels; though he has graciously condescended to supply 
us in the gospels with a mass of very precise information 
about Christ's parentage on both sides, for the sufficient 
intelligence and satisfaction of honestly-inquiring minds. 
But the manner of the production of the soul and mind of 
any being whatever is a God-preserved secret. Nor will 
any difficulty here present itself to any right-thinking 
intellect, for such will always joyfully acknowledge the 
absolute omnipotence of God, in that God is " able, out of 
the bare stones of the field, to raise up children unto Abra- 
ham. " There is therefore nothing about the revealed state- 
ment of the origination of Christ that ought to tempt us 
beyond the simple New Testament record, or lead to the 
invention or adoption of extravagant or mystical theories, 
so as to bring us under the just censure of striving to be 
wise above what is written. It is a subject revealed in 
so far as divine goodness has seen fit to reveal it. To seek 
to penetrate beyond that would be foolish as well as impious. 



RECAPITULATION. 

We have thus passed in survey and examination the 
leading doctrines inculcated in the Articles of Religion of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church — an undertaking, by the 
by, that if attempted in England, the country of their for- 
mation, would, not many years ago, have subjected us to 
ecclesiastical censure and criminal prosecution under law 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. • * 57 

and canons enacted, and never since repealed, in the reigns 
of Queen Elizabeth and King James the First. The articles 
of the Episcopal Church have not been thus selected be- 
cause of any special dissent from or disapproval of the doc- 
trines of that church more than of the doctrines of the several 
other churches that gather under the Nicene banner, but 
for the reason, chiefly, that its articles, so far as we have 
been able to consider them, comprise the dogmas generally 
entertained; are open and above-board, and very accessible. 
As an ecclesiastical organization, the Episcopal Church here, 
in the mother country, and in her colonies, is second to none 
in point of respectability, moral, mental, and mundane; and 
is well entitled to the very high consideration in which it is 
held the world over. It has done noble work for mankind 
at large, and will do yet more if, hereafter, it shall cast off 
the testaceous Nicene integument in which a semi-reformed 
Christianity encased it in the twilight times of Henry, Ed- 
ward, and Elizabeth, and stand forth in that only true lib- 
erty wherewith Christ maketh men free. 

We have seen that the birth of Nicenism was not blessed, 
for there came along with it bigotry, intolerance, and per- 
secution within the church itself. It proclaimed not ' ' peace 
on earth, goodwill to men." The Emperor Constantine 
originally intended nothing of a violent kind, but his asso- 
ciations with Alexander, Athanasius, with the Spanish Ho- 
sius, and like-minded ecclesiastics, soon implanted roots of 
bitterness which have overspread the greater part of the 
earth, and may yet require ages to eradicate. Nor were the 
Athanasians alone to blame, for their Arian opponents, if a 
faint trace or two less remote from the truth of the scrip- 
tures, were but too ready, when opportunity offered, for 
reprisals and vengeance. The great mistake laid in bring- 
ing theological differences for settlement before a tribunal 
of state. The emperor's proper course was to insist on 
public order, and that if the contending sectarists could 
not agree in thought, they should agree to differ. They 
would thereby have learnt the lesson of toleration, at least. 

If Constantine was harsh and severe, the performances of 
the Spaniard, Theodosius, who followed him in the empire 
about the year 379, were revolting. He quaffed full draughts 
of Nicene bigotry, though but for that he might have been 
a moderate and benignant ruler. In the case of a seditious 
outbreak at Antioch, he exhibited a forgiving disposition, 
but at Thessalonica, where he had often and long resided, 
he caused to be slaughtered many thousands of people who 
had been treacherously enticed to witness the games at the 



58 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

public circus. For three hours the bloody work went; on 
by the hands of barbarian troops; no questions were asked 
as to who were citizens and who were strangers; old and 
young; male and female; guilty or innocent; all were sub- 
jected to the destroying sword. It is true that there were 
in Thessalonica those who merited the punishment due to 
the cruel murders of a favorite general and several officers 
of the emperor, and they should have suffered condignly, 
but the indiscriminate slaughter of guilty and innocent, 
with no previous effort to distinguish the one from the 
other, was wholly unjustifiable. The Archbishop of Milan, 
Ambrose, severely arraigned the emperor, and put him 
under eight months' penance for his sanguinary crime. 
But Ambrose himself showed how deeply sectarian malice 
had penetrated the hearts of the religionists of those days. 
The bigoted monks and people of a little town on the 
Euphrates, stirred up in part by their bishop, burnt a Jew- 
ish synagogue and a Valentinian meeting-house. The 
local authorities and even the emperor insisted on a fair 
reparation, but Ambrose resisted this just settlement and 
succeeded in protecting the incendiaries because they had 
victimized nobody better than Jews and heretics. In the 
city of Constantinople Theodosius gave vent to his vin- 
dictive fanaticism by the expulsion of the Arian bishop 
from the Cathedral of St. Sophia, with all his clergy, and 
the immediate transfer of all the Arian churches, a hun- 
dred in number, to the comparatively few Athanasians. 
The emperor's orders were enforced by a large body of 
the Imperial Guards. Six weeks afterwards Theodosius 
abolished all professions of religion throughout his empire, 
save that of Nice alone. Church anathema, excommuni- 
cation, fines, confiscation, exile, ruin in every form awaited 
all who accepted not the Homo-ousian. It was this emperor 
who convened the synod of Constantinople in A. D. 381, 
known as the Second General Council, and who must be 
regarded as the final establisher of the Nicene faith. Under 
his rule it was death to keep Easter on any but the regula- 
tion day, and in his reign the office of inquisitor of the 
Faith was first instituted, to be followed up and brought 
to an accursed consummation in poor priest-ridden Spain 
by a fellow-countryman of Theodosius, him of ever exe- 
crable name and memory, Thomas of Torquemada. 

Our attention is now called to a subject of less general 
cognizance. Something of a spirit similar to what so un- 
happily prevailed in the post-apostolic age seems to have 
more or less pervaded Nicenist writers, preachers, and 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 59 

teachers in all the years since the Reformation. One of 
its symptoms is an overweening veneration for the ' ' early 
fathers," as they are unctuously termed, by which it is 
meant to say that the Holy Scriptures are made to revolve 
like satellites round the ' ' fathers ' ' and their dogmas, 
instead of the fathers round them. Whether this is be- 
cause the Bible is too plain, direct and matter of fact for 
the mystery-loving tastes of our theologians, who find 
more scope for their imaginations in the fancies of Justin 
Martyr, Origen, Cyprian and others than they do in the 
nobler and more serious teachings of scriptures, is a matter 
we shall not wait to determine. 

But to such a pass does this extend that the direct agency 
of Him, the Creator, whom we have been in the habit of 
identifying with the Jehovah I AM of the Old Testament, 
is not only practically pushed aside in behalf of an imagi- 
nary Christ, but we are told that the chief processes of 
man's salvation were perfected long ages before the date 
of the world's creation, and even the creation of the angels, 
and all this by Christ alone! How does this remind one of 
the way in which in the far east among the Hindoo priest- 
hood, Vishnu, the second in the Hindoo triad, with his 
avatars, or incarnations, has wellnigh totally obscured the 
two other co-divinities, Brahma and Siva, but Brahma 
especially? Not only is Christ alleged to have been the 
creator of man, but also the being who in an assumed body 
walked in the garden of Eden, gave the law from Sinai, 
and was the visible, embodied teacher of Adam, Noah, 
Abraham, Job, and Moses! Thus Christ is accounted to 
be the demiurge of the material, moral, and spiritual 
worlds, leaving to Him whom the New Testament never 
fails of denominating Christ's "God and Father" little 
other than the office of a sinecure. A remarkable idea of 
this character was hatched and fledged in a lecture before 
the English University of Oxford, in one of the early years 
of the present century, by the notable Dr. Reginald Heber, 
afterwards bishop of Calcutta. His fourth Bampton lecture 
has very much to say about the " Triune God; " the first 
person of which he probably assigns to God the Father, but 
the second and third places he allots to the Son and Holy 
Ghost, respectively, supposing the Son to be no other than 
the archangel Michael, and the Holy Ghost the archangel 
Gabriel. He undertakes to say that ' ' Michael is one of 
the names ascribed to our Saviour in his pre-existent state; " 
that ' ' Michael is the chief priest and expiator of heaven ; ' ' 
that his name "implies the image and likeness of God." 



60 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Of Gabriel, he says that his name "implies strength or 
active power; " that in him "we shall recognize a person 
in himself eternal and divine; that it was Gabriel who 
"rained fire on Sodom, and who is called the Son of God 
when he descended to protect the faithful worshippers of 
God in the Babylonian furnace," and more to the same 
purpose. It will be remembered that in his popular hymn, 
" From Greenland's Icy Mountains," Bishop Heber denom- 
inates Christ as "Creator." And all this in most pious 
oblivion of the Saviour's repeated admonitions of the sole 
godhead of the Father, and that "true worship" can be 
offered to no other than to Him. What a commentary is 
this on the perverse power of a false education ! 

Touching the dependence to be placed on the "early 
fathers," the learned and indefatigable John Milton says: 
" Whatever time or the heedless hand of blind chance hath 
drawn from old to this present, in her huge drag-net, 
whether fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, un- 
chosen — those are the ' ' fathers. ' ' And the justly-celebrated 
Jeremy Taylor, in his masterly book on toleration, entitled 
The Liberty of Prophesying, says : l ' There are some that 
think they can determine all questions in the world by two 
or three sayings of the fathers, or by the consent of so many 
as they will please to call a concurrent testimony; but this 
consideration will soon be at an end, for if the fathers, 
-when they are witnesses of tradition, do not always speak 
the truth, as it has happened in the case of Papias and his 
numerous followers for almost three ages together, then is 
their testimony more improbable when they dispute or 
write commentaries." And another of the same namej a 
bright light of the English church of the present century, 
Isaac Taylor, though of the Nicene persuasion, writes as 
follows : "By steps too insensible and easy to admit of their 
being now distinctly traced, the religious system professed 
in the Christian church had, in the course of two hundred 
years, reckoning from the death of the last of the Apostles, 
become capitally distinguished from the Christianity of 
the Apostles ; and from that time onward continued to 
move, with a steady and uniform progress, and always 
straightforward, until it presents itself to view in the 
terrible sublimity of a monstrous tyranny unmatched in 
cruelty, perfidy, and profligacy. And, assuredly, we are 
far from having as yet thrown off all those superstitions 
that sprang up in the second and third centuries, and which 
the Romish church inherited and expanded. The Lutheran 
reformation was a glorious beginning that waits for its 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 6r 

consummation. Had it, indeed, been complete and con- 
sistent in principle and in practice, it would have been 
universal in its actual spread. The Papacy still lives, and 
it must live tintil Protestantism shall be reformed. We 
are still entangled in the snares woven in the age of Irenseus, 
Justin Martyr, and Cyprian." 

Augustine, bishop of Hippo, in Numidia, was born near 
the middle of the fourth century, and consequently had a 
good opportunity for knowing the writings of the earlier 
fathers. He says, "Compositions of this kind have not 
canonical authority. Readers of the fathers are not to sup- 
pose that the testimonies produced from their works are 
unexceptionable, for their opinions may in particular cases 
be untrue. Truly catholic and praiseworthy as they were, 
we are not to esteem their writings on a level with holy 
scripture. On the contrary, we may, with all the honor 
and deference due them, blame whatever in them, by 
divine assistance and sound reasoning, we discover to be 
unfounded. ' ' 

The Rev. John Collinson, of the English Church, in his 
lectures on the Ancient Fathers, remarks, "Whatever were- 
the causes of religious degeneracy, it is certain that by im- 
perceptible degrees the doctrines of men superseded the 
letter of scripture and became the acknowledged standard 
of religious truth." To such a length, says Mr. Collinson, 
did this infatuation extend, that " to propose doubts, to* 
weigh opinions, was declared contumacy and presumption, 
and to differ, heresy. The authority of the fathers was 
exaggerated beyond all bounds. It is granted that the 
fathers were men fallible and infirm ; they committed 
mistakes ; neither did they write in the style of elegant 
scholars; they have incautiously advanced some things of 
which the church of Rome has taken advantage as a foun- 
dation for superstition. ' ' 

From the foregoing authorities something near the just 
value of the writings of the early fathers — though many of 
these have been in more recent times sadly interpolated 
and corrupted — might be estimated. They are useful as 
testimonies to what happened in their days respectively, 
but are to be held in no lofty account as standards of reli- 
gious opinion or authority. But another lesson might be 
learnt, and one that will be of immediate application to 
our own times and our own people. I refer to the pro- 
pensity among those not braced up by a well-grounded and 
firm reliance upon teachings purely divine and the unim- 
passioned dictates of right reason, to accept the often crude- 



62 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

judgments of professional teachers of religion as final and 
conclusive. This works badly for both teachers and taught. 
It encourages carelessness and superficiality in the one, and 
becomes the fertile source of ignorance, indifference and 
practical irreligion in the other. It is a virtual non-com- 
pliance with that special command of the Saviour, " Call 
no man upon the earth your master, for one is your Master, 
namely, Christ, and all ye are brethren." 

The excursion we have made through the early centuries 
of our era has sufficed to show how little real submission 
has been yielded to the authoritative truth delivered by 
Moses (Deut., 6: 3 to 9), and very pointedly reannounced 
by the greater than Moses in Mark, chap. 12, verses 28 to 
34. Christ's orthodoxy in respect to Mosaic or true Jewish 
doctrine was tested on this occasion as it had been on 
others, and proved to be beyond the ability of his bitterest 
enemies to impugn as heretical. They ceased, therefore, 
to interrogate him. Had Christ made reply conformably 
to what passes for ' ' orthodoxy ' ' in these present days, he 
would have been most promptly convicted and condemned, 
and, quite likely, stoned to death upon the spot. That 
authoritative truth, leading all the other truths of the Bible, 
and of the compendious Apostles' creed, was overset and ob- 
literated, so far as they could do it, by Constantine's gather- 
ing in his palace at Nice, and a tinsel fabrication violently 
substituted for the old popular creed. Thenceforward 
"they taught for doctrines the commandments of men." 
But the "first commandment of all," binding Jew and 
Christian Gentile alike, can never be thrust quite out of 
sight. It will forever stand at the portal of the true reli- 
gion to which finally all that love and seek salvation 
through the "door of the sheep" will come. The "first 
commandment of all," understood by Christ exactly as 
understood by the Jew, insists on the proper unity of God — 
He, and "none other but He" — having nothing to say 
about any evasive ' ' unit)- of godhead, ' ' in which there 
might be a million separate and distinct individuals gods, 
as says St. Paul, "gods many." Trinity is not unity, but 
the negation of it, and a profession thereof shows a hank- 
ering after what both Old and New Testament interdict. 
Perhaps a general overthrow of affluent church establish- 
ments will be one of the agencies requisite to the purifica- 
tion of doctrine and worship, for so long as ministers of 
religion are rewarded with exuberant incomes for urging 
dogmas concocted at Nice, they will, as human nature is 
mostly constituted, be very apt to blink the pure and 
uncompromising teachings that emanated from Nazareth. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 63 



The Disciples oe Christ is a self-named religious 
organization which, according to the statements of its 
friends, sprung from a germ of sentiment in the mind of 
Thomas Campbell, a Presbyterian minister and a native 
of the north of Ireland, who, in the year 1809, deploring 
the differences and divisions among Protestant sects, and 
being dissatisfied with certain ' ' human inventions ' ' of bad 
portent that had sway among them, set about attempting 
a remedy. His aim was, if possible, to restore to the 
Christian world the faith and love of the primitive church, 
and, in seeking that end, to propose no "terms of union, 
communion or co-operation not as old as the New Testa- 
ment. " In 1823 a periodical was started in Bethany, 
Virginia, called " The Christian Baptist, under the charge 
of Alexander Campbell, a son of the said Thomas, which 
continued seven years and was superseded by a monthly 
magazine, The Millennial Harbinger, which ran for forty 
years. The results of the labors of these men will appear 
truly great from the present, approximate, statistics of the 
denomination, which counts in the United States, in round 
numbers, 570,000 members, divided into 4900 congrega- 
tions, supplied by 3700 ministers, mostly in the Western 
States. 

The Church polity is mainly like the Baptist, but much 
less rigid and uncompromising, and they baptize by immer- 
sion. They regard baptism, if undertaken in the right 
repentant spirit, and with a sincere purpose of amended 
and obedient life, as assuring remission of past sins. They 
admit to the Lord's Supper all who have been baptized and 
lead Christian lives, and make the supper a part of the 
regular Lord's day worship. 

They lay it down %s an abiding maxim ' ' To speak when 
the Bible speaks, and to be silent when the Bible is silent; " 
doubtless, an excellent maxim, if lived up to as well as 
professed. They are solicitous of being classed among the 
so-called ' ' evangelical ' ' denominations, and by way of 
proof of it insert among the foremost of their ' ' items of 
doctrine ' ' the following, viz. : 

' ' The revelation of God, especially in the New Testa- 
ment, in the tri-personality of Father, Son, and Holv 
Spirit." 

Candor compels our expression of belief that in reaching 
back for the faith of the primitive church the Disciples 
found neither in the Bible nor in the age ' ' as old as the 
New Testament ' ' any such doctrine as the tri-personality 
of God. That doctrine, if such it must be called, was not 



64 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

broached in the first or New Testament century, but in the 
fourth century, which fact is incontrovertibly signalized 
by the substitution in the fourth century of the Nicene for 
the Apostles' creed, and the enforcement of the new 
dogmas by imperial decree and military subjugation. 

In performing the rite of baptism the "Disciples" couple 
the usual Apostolic formula of baptizing "into the name of 
the Lord Jesus" with the supposed formula of "into the 
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," 
as found at the close of Matthew's gospel ; from which 
latter quotation it seems very probable that they acquire 
the confidence to allege that the New Testament reveals 
God as a " tripersonal " being. The almost numberless 
instances of the statement of the unity of God in both the 
Old and New Testaments — of statement in the most direct, 
didactic, and positive manner — put upon the devotees of 
" tripersonality " the necessity of making the very most 
of any crevice or interstice, no matter how minute, in the 
free, generous, and unsuspecting diction of the Bible, 
through which the glimpse of a possibility might be caught 
that tripersonality is even so much as hinted at. The 
verbal collocation of the names of the Father, of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost at the close of Matthew is thus very 
often made the occasion for an inference to which the whole 
tenor and drift of the Bible is a contradiction; yet it is upon 
just such an inference that the baseless fabric of triperson- 
ality is fain to ground itself. There are numerous other 
places in the New Testament where the names of God and 
Christ and the Spirit of God are brought into propinquity, 
yet not one of these is ever referred to for tripersonal pur- 
poses, the reason being that the fuller matter of such texts 
forbids it. * In the text in question its very compendious- 
ness and summary-like character are turned to an account 
which nothing suggested in it will justify; yet it is held to 
by not a few Nicenist writers as with almost a death-grip. 

* Nicenists, in their penury of proof of the Trinity doctrine, do not hesi- 
tate to substitute inference for evidence, and so to leap at their desired 
conclusion. This is eminently what they do in taking the bare mention 
of the names of Father, Sou and Holy Ghost in Matt., 28: 19, as proof of 
the Trinity. There is no lack of passages of scripture wherein the three 
are mentioned, not barely by name as in the said text, but in connexion 
with what the}' vouchsafe in behalf of man's salvation. Let Nicenists 
give just heed to these instructive texts, and they will not fail to acquire 
genuinely scriptural ideas upon the great subject. Among these texts are 
Matt., 3: 16; 12 :28; Acts, 2 132 and 33 ; 5 :30 to 32 ; 7 155 ; 10:38; Romans, 
8:9andu; i5:i6and3o; 1st Cor., 6 : 11 ; 12 13 to 6 ; 2dCor., 1 :2i and 22 ; 
3:3; 13:14; Gal., 4:6; Eph., 1 : 17; 2:18; 4:4 to 6; Philipp., 3:3; Heb. y 
2 : 3 and 4 ; 1st Peter, 1 : 2, &c. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 65 

The justly-respected Whately, late Episcopal Archbishop 
of Dublin, is one of the writers who places exceeding reli- 
ance on the verse, Matt, 28: 19, as a proof text for the 
Trinity. One would think his quality and quantity of 
brain and candor of spirit should have led him to an oppo- 
site conclusion. See his ' ' Logic ' ' under the note Person. 
After stating, truly enough, the difficulties encountered by 
many conscientious persons on the subject of the Trinity 
and the danger they apprehend from dwelling upon it, he 
says, "Though it is, in fact, the very faith into which, by 
our Lord's appointment, we are baptized." Could a much 
blinder leap at an erroneous conclusion be made? If Dr. 
Whately and people of this day are so baptized, the con- 
verts under the Apostles were not. Are we to conclude 
that the whole company of the Apostles, without a known 
exception, so blundered about the purpose and duty of 
baptism as to mistake concerning the faith with which it 
was connected, or to ignore the authority that appointed 
it? Such must be the conclusion if Dr. Whately' s notion 
is correct. Who, then, is in the wrong, all the Apostles or 
Dr. Whately? We must go with the majority, and vote 
against the excellent and learned Doctor. What then? 
The conclusion follows that the text Matt, 28:19 does 
not teach the Trinity, and that Christ had no intention 
that it should. Undoubtedly Father, Son and Holy Ghost 
are representative names for the whole Christian religion. 
The Father is God ; the Son is the Son of God ; and the 
Holy Ghost is the Spirit of God. Rightly to know each 
of these is life eternal, and a prayerful resort to God's Word 
will furnish that knowledge. 

The occasion on which Christ gave the injunction in 
Matt 28:19 was one of unexceeded interest and import- 
ance. Having been before his crucifixion Messiah to the 
Jews only, Jesus was now under divine appointment the 
universal Messiah, and with the universal Father and His 
universal Spirit, a principal agent in the regeneration and 
salvation of the whole human race. Consult on this, 
Hebrews, 5: 5, 6, 10 and adjacent verses; also, Hebrews, 
7 : 20 to 25. A respectable authority (International Cyclo- 
paedia, under Creeds and Confessions,) states that "What 
has been called the Apostles' creed is the earliest form of 
the Christian creed that exists, unless we give precedence 
to the baptismal formula at the close of St. Matthew's 
gospel, out of which many suppose the Apostles' creed to 
have grown. ' ' These remarks tend to confirm the view 
we have taken relative to the summary-like character of 
5 



66 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Christ's parting instructions. If the Apostles' creed grew 
out of this text it was for the reason we have given, viz., 
that to be serviceably understood the text required a 
proper expansion. And if such expansion is made in the 
Apostles' creed, in which mention is made of but One 
God, the Almighty Father, no Trinity is taught. Lastly, 
they evince but little respect for the fearless and truth-speak- 
ing quality of the Lord Jesus who suggest the thought that 
(having taught the opposite of the Trinity all his previous 
life) he waited till near the moment of his departure to 
break to his Apostles, in brief and obscure words, the 
inscrutable ' ' mystery. ' ' Anyway, the x\postles saw no 
Trinity in Christ's parting commands, for they never 
taught or recognized it. 

If we take for a foundation-fact of our creed the saying 
of the Lord Jesus that the Holy Spirit ' ' proceedeth from 
the Father," then we must regard the Father and the Holy 
Ghost as much one and the same entity, or being, as a man 
and the spirit of that man are one being. God and the 
Holy Ghost have therefore really one and the same person- 
ality, the Holy Ghost being a spiritual emanation or pro- 
cession from God Himself. 

Now, we learn from the scriptures, and our own observa- 
tion is confirmatory, that the Infinite Supreme does not 
communicate to or with His creatures in His immediate 
personality — they could not survive it — but by His Spirit; 
by the communicative power of which Spirit it was that 
the Saviour himself was originated almost 1890 years ago; 
was anointed for his messiahship; led into the wilderness 
to undergo his temptation by Satan ; returned after his 
temptation to his country of Galilee; was inspired to preach 
the gospel and the acceptable year of the Lord ; was enabled 
to perform a numberless series of miraculous works through- 
out his most faithful ministry, and by which he gave com- 
mandment to his Apostles shortly before his ascension; 
which same Spirit, promised to him by the Father, with 
whom it originates and from whom it proceedeth, he shed 
forth in profusion upon his disciples on the day of Pente- 
cost ; and by which, lastly, after having received from the 
Father the grand revelation of things which must sooner 
or later "come to pass," Jesus admonished, threatened, 
and encouraged the churches of Asia Minor and closed 
the sacred record of the Word of God. 

It was because the miracles that came from the mouth 
and hands of Christ were really executed by the Spirit of 






NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 67 

God, that the sin of certain Jewish scribes, who sacri- 
legiously attributed those miracles to diabolical agency, was 
condemned as absolutely and for ever unpardonable. That 
was a deliberate and designed insult, and no mere misap- 
prehension or mistake, upon the goodness and honor of the 
Most High God, that not even the benign forbearance of 
Heaven, which worked miracles for man's convincement 
and salvation, could forgive. A word spoken against Christ 
(it is not said against the Father, as some Nicenists pretend) 
would be forgiven, ' ' but whosoever speaketh against the 
Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this 
world nor in the world that is to come. ' ' The blasphemy 
against the Holy Ghost was a giving to the devils the glory 
that belonged to God alone, for who save God could per- 
form the signs and wonders that were displayed ? It was 
a crime of the most reeking flagrancy; an alliance with 
Pandemonium. 

In endeavoring to explain the creed of the "Disciples," 
that ' ' Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the living 
God, ' ' their books and pamphlets seem to lack entire candor 
and straightforwardness. They appear to seek to identify 
the scriptural phrase ' ' Son of God ' ' with the unscriptural 
Nicenism "God-the-Son," so as to get out of the former the 
illegitimate meaning conveyed in the latter, which latter, 
being a human invention and having no status in the Bible, 
they do not commit to print. Perhaps it would have been 
better and safer in the long run, if, in starting a new society, 
the Disciples had gone for their foundation down to hard- 
pan (such, for instance, as 1st Timothy, 2 : 5), and so have 
patiently worked a ' ' return to the simple faith and practice 
of the uncorrupted church" — a consummation they have 
not yet achieved. They could then have more consistently 
enlarged ' ' about obeying the Saviour' s commandments, ' ' 
particularly the first-of-all of them, as he denned it in Mark 
12: 29. That might have been a considerable step towards 
a restoration of the "simple religion of Jesus as he gave it 
to the world in the beginning," — in saying which, and 
other things like it, the Disciples proclaim their belief that 
the religion of Jesus, as now mostly professed, is not ' ' the 
simple religion he gave the world in the beginning." In 
which, quite likely, they are more than half right. 



68 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 



The Congregationalist body is divided into Trini- 
tarian and Unitarian congregationalists. The former class 
will now engage our attention. It is Nicenist, while the 
latter is not. 

The Trinitarian congregationalists constitute a numerous 
and highly respectable branch of the church of our day, 
and are especially strong in the Eastern States of the 
Union. The following is believed to be pretty nearly their 
present strength : congregations, 3700 ; ministers, 3600 ; 
communicants, 385,000. 

Their church polity is less absolutely individual, inde- 
pendent, and self-controlling than the Baptist, but free 
from such government as that by presbyteries, synods, 
and general assemblies, as with the Presbyterians. Con- 
gregationalism is less self-governed than the Baptist, in 
that each society acknowledges a connexion or relation- 
ship with other similar societies for the purposes, when 
necessary, of mutual counsel and help ; yet, if need be, in 
the last resort, it falls back upon itself alone. Of course, 
nothing like Episcopalianism, even in the form adopted 
by the Methodist Episcopal church, has any allowance 
whatever in this church. 

The Congregationalists, whilst acknowledging the form 
of baptism by immersion to be good, regard other methods 
by aspersion as equally so, and administer the rite to per- 
sons of all ages, from the youngest to the oldest. 

That the Congregationalists are Nicenist, might be in- 
ferred from their being Trinitarian. No portion of the 
great Nicenist mass is, in fact, more doctrinally thorough- 
going than they. They also adopt to the fullest extent 
the opinions first brought clearly out by Anselm, on the 
subject of the atonement. Anselm was by birth a Pied- 
montese, but Romish archbishop of Canterbury in England 
during the reigns of William Rufus and Henry the First. 
As just stated, the Congregationalists are thoroughgoing 
in their doctrinal views. As for our humble self we feel 
towards them as it seems the Apostle Paul might feel if 
he were now among us, and for about the same reason ; 
almost provokingly so. At all events, as we read, lying 
open before us, the pleasantly written and, in a literary 
aspect, the able discourse of a Congregationalist doctor 
of divinity, specially preached and printed in one of our 
foremost cities, we are unavoidably reminded of how Paul 
felt whilst taking his tour through the city of Athens and 
beholding that city wholly given to idolatry. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 69 

The learned doctor remarks that "if a man wishes to 
know what he must do to be saved, and goes to a Baptist, 
Methodist, Episcopalian, or Congregationalist minister or 
Christian, they will each tell him, for substance, that 
which will lead him to pay divine honors to Jesus Christ. 
If he kneels in prayer with them, they will pray to Jesus 
Christ as the Saviour of the world. Let him sing with 
them, and they will sing hymns in accordance with that 
new song which is sung before the throne. This is what 
we believe to be meant by calling on the name of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours. It is rendering divine 
■worship to Jesus Christ as the redeemer of men. ' ' 

There was an occasion in the course of the Apostle Paul's 
extended ministry when the same question as the foregoing 
was asked of him and his prison companion Silas : — " What 
must I do to be saved?" Paul's answer was: "Believe on 
the Lord (not God) Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved 
and thy house." The questioner, it was Paul's jailer, 
after having performed fitting acts of personal respect and 
kindness, showed his ready faith in Christ by being "bap- 
tized and all his straightway," and then " rejoiced " at the 
blessed change that had been wrought upon him, "believ- 
ing in God with all his house." Previous to this the 
Apostle Peter, with the eleven other Apostles around him, 
answered a similar question put to them by the heart- 
stricken thousands to whom they had been preaching, 
' ' Repent and be baptized, every one of you, upon the name 
of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall re- 
ceive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto 
you and to your children and to all that are afar off, as 
many as the Lord our God shall call. " It is not necessary 
to cite other like instances. These are enough to show 
that the Apostles did nothing whatever that would lead 
the converts, Jews, as most of them were, to "pay divine 
honors to Jesus Christ, " "to pray to Christ, " or " render 
to Jesus Christ divine worship. ' ' When Jesus Christ was 
preached by the Apostles he was not preached as a God to- 
be worshipped with divine honors, but as a master and 
teacher and an opener of the pathway to heaven, to be 
obeyed and imitated. He was preached not as the object 
of prayer but as "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of 
God by miracles, wonders, and signs which (Christ did not 
perform of his own ability but which) God did by him ' ' ; 
and then afterwards by the same power of God was himself 
raised from the dead. In like manner Paul, when speaking 
at Athens of Christ as the medium through whose visible 



7<D NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

instrumentality the invisible God will judge the world, 
denominated him a "man" whom God "had raised from 
the dead." Besides these two apostles there is the clear, 
unmistakable testimony of Christ himself that he was a 
"man who told the truth which (was not original with 
him but which) he had heard of God." Most certainly 
then there is no good reason for supposing that to be a safe 
path to salvation which worships with ' ' divine honors ' ' a 
man, or any other but God, as those must worship who 
worship Christ in the supreme degree of paying him 
"divine honors." Christ, who refused even to be called 
"good," never claimed such; he would not have such; he 
would have been shocked at and repelled such had they 
been offered him, for none knew better than he that he was 
not entitled to them. What his own duty was and the duty 
of all men (Congregationalists included) he showed by 
quoting, in answer to Satan's enticement, from Deuter- 
onomy, ' ' Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him 
only shalt thou serve." Christ taught his disciples to pray 
to the Father alone, as he prayed himself; and one of the 
last commands of the closing book of Revelation, as uttered 
by Christ's representative angel to the Apostle John, was 
' ' Worship God. ' ' 

Nor let any lay the flattering unction to their conceits 
that because men are baptized into the name of Christ that 
Christ is thereby deified. The very reverse is the case. 
We are baptized into Christ not because he is God but for 
the very reason that he is man like unto those who are 
baptized into him, and who thereupon and thereby enter 
into his name and ' ' put on ' ' Christ. When Paul sharply 
censured the Corinthians for their schisms and contentions 
he put them the questions, ' ' Is Christ divided ? Was Paul 
crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of 
Paul?" They indeed were not, but were baptized into 
Christ who had died for them, and thereby became par- 
takers in his death and what followed it. We are baptized 
into Christ because Christ was crucified, died, was buried, 
rose again from the dead, and finally ascended on high. 
Our baptism puts us into union, or, rather let us say, unity 
with Christ. " For we are members of his body, of his 
flesh, and of his bones, ' ' (Eph. , 5 : 30.) After having received 
a true baptism we are regarded and should regard ourselves 
as being dead to this present world ; our true and hopeful 
life being hid with Christ in God. But to so much as 
think a thought which in any way connects the idea of 
death with the personality of God is most dishonoring to 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 7 1 

Him who "alone hath immortality," and certainly indi- 
cates a low religious tone which no amount or degree of 
mere "evangelical" pretension can successfully conceal, 
whether taken on by doctor of divinity, priest, pope, or 
other mortal. 

After several pages of matter of comparative indifference, 
our learned doctor proceeds to speak of Trinitarianism, as 
if he had not already asseverated almost the gravest point 
under that head. He quotes expressions of the Saviour 
in order to show Christ's testimony to the permanent 
validity of the Old Testament, and repeats the words "the 
law and the prophets, ' ' which might have had the effect of 
inducing more or fewer of his hearers to suppose him a 
very decided ' ' law and prophet ' ' man. 

It cannot, however, escape notice that instead of bring- 
ing forward his proofs that the " law and the prophets " 
are on the Trinitarian side, he furnishes no testimony 
whatever. Now without going back to God' s first announce- 
ment, through Moses to the Israelites, of His name I AM, 
we may remark that ' ' the law ' ' properly begins with the 
ten commandments, the first of which enjoins One God, in 
the singular number, and subsequently ' ' Thou shalt wor- 
ship no other God, for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is 
a jealous God ; " and again, " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our 
God is one Lord ; ' ' whereas, according to the Trinitarian 
theory, it should have been ' ' The Lord our God is three 
Lords. And in the notable song of Moses, God is quoted 
as saying ' ' See now that I, even I, am he and there is no 
God with me." Would the Deity, if consisting of three 
equal, co-ordinate members, speak to His listening and 
dependent creatures concerning Himself or Themselves in 
language like that, every way calculated to produce a wrong 
impression? Is God to be thought of like that ? And who 
are they that are bold to suggest such an imputation? 

Was it not, then, considerably too daring a thing to say 
in the face of a congregation of people that the ' ' law ' ' 
favored Trinitarianism ? With respect to the ' ' prophets, ' ' 
will our doctor fare any better? The prophet David says 
in his Psalms, ' ' Sing unto God, sing praises to His name ; 
extol Him that rideth upon the heavens by His name Jah 
(I am), and rejoice before Him. ' ' Unto Thee, ' ' says David, 
' ' will I sing with the harp, O thou Holy One of Israel. ' ' 
"Thou art my Father (not Fathers), my God (not Gods), 
and the rock of my salvation. ' ' 

That mighty prophet, the rapt Isaiah, speaks forth, 
"Thus saith the Lord the king of Israel and his redeemer 



72 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last, and 
besides me there is no God. Is there a God beside me ? 
Yea, there is no God : I know not any." Yet for all this 
and greatly more that might be adduced, our doctor de- 
clares that there are "proofs that demonstrate the equal 
deity of three, and that there is a threefold distinction in 
God's nature." But his alleged demonstrations fail to 
appear and can be traced to nothing more substantial than 
dogmatic assertion. It goes to his credit, however, that 
he acknowledges the Trinity theory to be a " mystery, ' ' 
an "inexplicable enigma," somewhat inducing the idea 
that he advocates it upon the old monkish principle, "I 
believe, because it is impossible. ' ' 

Pursuing his career of "mystery" and "inexplicable 
enigma," he sets forth the proposition that Christ has 
"two distinct natures in one person ;" that is to say, that 
Christ is two distinct and diametrically different kinds of 
beings at one and the same time, though he was only one 
kind of being from all eternity down to a comparatively 
very late period, — in a manner, yesterday, — since, in fact, 
the time of Julius Caesar. How so great a change as is 
involved in becoming partly some one else could occur to 
an unchangeable deity, our learned doctor does not ex- 
plain, or even notice ; perhaps because that, too, is an 
"inexplicable enigma." He cites no text from either the 
Old or New Testament wherein this amazing two-nature 
dogma is disclosed ; whereas, were it an article of faith 
divinely imparted, we might rest assured that even miracles 
would be wrought, if necessary, to sustain it. 

Adopting a kind of logic much of the inexplicable order, 
he asks: Why, if we deny Christ's deity, do we not "doubt 
and deny his human nature " ? Because Christ said " Be- 
fore Abraham was, I am." It is evident from this query 
that our doctor is one of the strangely numerous class even 
among learned professors of theology who suppose this text 
in John's gospel, 8:58, to teach Christ's pre-existence, or 
existence before his generation and birth as narrated for us 
in the gospels. Whether by honest inadvertence, or a less 
honest design of putting the scripture into the false position 
of a witness for pre-existence, we will not undertake to 
decide, yet so it is that the Trinitarian translators, by their 
inconsistency of translation, laid a trap in this text into 
which not a few have carelessly fallen. In the 24th and 
28th verses of the same 8th chapter of John, the English 
pronoun he is placed after the words ' ' I am. ' ' It is printed 
in italics to show that it is not in the original Greek, but 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 73 

is required by the sense. The same thing is done in the 
9th verse of the next chapter ; in the 5th, 6th, and 8th 
verses of the 18th chapter ; in the 25th verse of the 13th of 
Acts, and elsewhere. The English pronoun he in the 8th 
chapter of John is put for the noun Christ, and had it been 
placed after ' ' I am ' ' in the 58th verse, as it is in the 24th 
and 28th verses, the translators would have been both con- 
sistent and right, and the meaning of Jesus that even before 
Abraham was born he (Jesus) was predestined to be the 
Christ, could not have been easily misunderstood. The 
wrongful omission of he in the said 58th verse is in marked 
contrast with what the same translators did in Mark, 13: 6, 
and Luke, 21: 8, where they were not satisfied with supply- 
ing the mere pronoun he after £ ' I am, ' ' but put the indi- 
cated noun, Christ, itself. The late Revisers did little for 
truth and nothing for their own praise when they left the 
58th verse as they found it in the older translation. 

Other texts are quoted by our reverend friend which he 
believes to support his views touching the deity of Christ ; 
in most of which, and we say it with no purpose of dis- 
paragement, he appears to be a novice in hermeneutics or 
scriptural interpretation. He is as literal as a child, or as 
were those dissatisfied followers of Christ who could not 
digest his figurative and picturesque expressions relative to 
divine things, and therefore ' ' walked no more with him ; ' ' 
•or, again, those malignant rulers and scribes who wilfully 
misinterpreted his teachings. It is undoubtedly true that, 
at the first blush, many, perhaps most, of Christ's pro- 
foundest lessons (which he designated ' ' mysteries of the 
kingdom," Matt, 13: 10 and n) were given in parables or 
figurative speech ; yet, it so providentially happens, or 
rather, we may believe, Christ distinctly intended, that his 
every dark saying should contain a key to its own solution, 
to be found by them who seek for it. 

Thus in the next quoted text, John, 3: 13 : 'And no man 
hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from 
heaven, namely, the Son of man who is in heaven," the 
apparent difficulty of understanding how the Son of man 
came down from heaven, when the scripture itself testifies 
that the Son of man was born and reared upon the earth, 
is removed by the concluding sentence, which says ' ' who 
is in heaven." To have " come down from heaven," and 
at the same time to be "in heaven," plainly points to what 
Christ meant by " heaven," viz., that it is not a place so 
much as a state of the soul, in which Christ always dwelt; 
the same state which is elsewhere described as "in the 



74 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

bosom of the Father, ' ' a state wherein God was continually 
present by the indwelling of His Spirit, which in Christ 
was measureless. The lesson taught by this text is that the 
presence of God's Holy Spirit in the soul is heavenly, and 
that to have it in the fulness possessed by Christ is heaven; 
for wherever God is, heaven goes with Him — a truth which 
all might experience would they drop their worldliness and 
give place to the celestial visitant. Christ points to his 
own experience in this matter, when, with the utmost 
emphasis, he said to Nicodemus, ' ' We speak that we do 
know and testify that we have seen. ' ' It was no visionary 
hallucination. 

The next text is the third verse of the first chapter of 
John's gospel, where the allusion is not to Christ. To 
insist that Christ is the Creator, when he unequivocally 
said that of himself he could " do nothing ;" and, again, 
that the Son can do nothing of himself, ' ' and did only that 
which was shown him by the Father, is at least to disre- 
gard, if not to contradict him. Our friend thinks to prove 
Christ's pre-existence by the text in John 17:5, where 
Christ prays for "the glory which he had with the Father 
before the world was." Now, this glory for which Christ 
prayed was prospective, not retrospective; it was a glory 
(verse 22) which his disciples "may behold," and was due 
to that love which in the far back ages the Father had en- 
tertained by anticipation for His obedient Son. God loved 
Christ "before the foundation of the world" just as he had 
prepared the kingdom for the righteous ' ' from the founda- 
tion of the world," but which they were not to inherit till 
after the Son of man shall come in his glory. Paul tells 
the Ephesian saints that they were chosen in Christ "before 
the foundation of the world," and Peter says that Christ 
' ' was verily foreordained before the foundation of the 
world." In the Revelations, the Lamb is said to be slain 
"from the foundation of the world," all which plainly 
means in the anticipation, irreversible purpose, or fore- 
ordination of the Most High. The glory and the joy 
Christ prayed for had been "set before him," therefore it 
was future, for the sake of which he "endured the cross, 
despised its shame and was set down at the right hand of 
the throne of God," where personally he had never been 
before. To this effect is Luke 24:26. 

Our Congregationalist friend makes a reference to the 
benediction in the last verse of the 2d Corinthians, ex- 
pressing his unbelief that the ' ' name of a created being 
and of an attribute should be associated with the name of 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 75 

God," for he acknowledges the Father to be uniformly- 
called God in the Bible and was the Jehovah of the Jews. 
Now the verse in question needs to be no other than it is to 
bear the severest criticism and yet not be subject to the 
conditions the doctor would impose. ' ' The grace of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." Here is invoked on the Corinthians 
the personal favor of the Lord and Master of Christians, 
divinely so appointed. Of him who said to his disciples, 
' ' Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am. ' ' 
He did not assume to be their God. Next is invoked "the 
love of God." As the God and Father of the Corinthian 
saints, what so natural and desirable as His love? And 
lastly it is implored that "the communion of the Holy 
Ghost be ' ' likewise ' ' with them all. ' ' That is, the common 
participation in the outpouring of the Divine Spirit. What, 
then, is there to cavil at? Christ tells the angel of the 
church of Sardis that he will confess the name of him that 
overcometh ' ' before his Father and before his angels. ' ' 
Here the names of created angels are associated with the 
name of God, and if so, why not the names of the Son of 
God and of the Spirit of God with the name of God most 
high, who is "all in all" ? Surely our friend is the most 
hypercritical of mankind and yet gains nothing by it. Not 
the faintest trace of a Trinity can be descried in 2d Cor. 

J 3 :I 4- 

In calling attention to John 17:5 it is strange that our 
preacher had not got a sight of the preceding third verse, 
where he could have learnt who is ' ' the only true God ' ' 
to the exclusion of every other being. Was his vision con- 
trolled by his sectarianism ? 

He insists on Christ's native omnipotence in the face of 
Christ's most positive disclaimers : — John, 5: 19 and 30; 
John, 14: 10; John, 10: 25 and 37. Also Acts, 2: 22; Matt, 
28:18; Matt, 20:23; Acts, 1:17. So with the divine attri- 
bute of omniscience which our doctor ascribes to Christ, 
though Christ himself pronounced to the contrary. Matt. , 
24:36; Mark, 13:32; Rev., 1:1. 

It is objected by our reverend friend that if the word 
Trinity is not in the Bible neither is omniscience, or unity 
of God, or sacrament, or other much needed words. True, 
but the verbal equivalents of all these words are found 
there, as "God only wise ; " "God is One," &c, but no- 
where in the Bible is it said that Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost are one entity, except in the interpolated or spuri- 
ous verse in 1st John, 5: 7. The word Trinity has no 
equivalent in the Bible, consequently it is expressive of 



j6 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

nothing in the scripture, and the scripture has no use for 
it. It is a word invented by Theophilus of Antioch to- 
wards the end of the second century, about the year 180, 
when the ' ' perverse things ' ' predicted by Paul to the 
elders of the church gathered at Miletus doubtless began 
to be agitated. (Acts, 20: 30.) 

The preacher whose criticisms we are considering, sar- 
castically refers to what some have said concerning the 
Holy Ghost, that it is " divine influence. " That might, 
indeed, be a narrow and unsatisfactory statement, yet 
words are used in scripture indicating its manner of 
operation as proceeding, anointing, filling, falling, shed 
forth, poured out, &c. Thus Christ breathed on his dis- 
ciples the Holy Ghost, which we may be sure was a breath 
divinely influential on the recipients, though nothing was 
ever hinted about the disciples worshipping the breath as 
a personal being distinct from the personality of God the 
Father from whom it originally proceeds. So true is it 
that ' ' the Lord is that Spirit. ' ' (2d Cor. ,3:17.) The Holy 
Ghost was dispensed not only by Christ himself, but by 
his Apostles in answer to prayer. (See Acts, 8: 15 to 18 ; 
also Acts, 19: 6.) A person could not be "shed forth" or 
"poured out," and especially not a divine personality by 
human hands ! 

Our critical friend is dissatisfied with the Lord Jesus 
himself when the latter speaks discordantly with his 
-cherished ideas. When Christ says, "My Father is greater 
than I," the doctor fails to see in it "even a common 
reverence for God and an ordinary sense of propriety." 
It would have suited him much better had Christ said 
"My Father is no greater than I." He thinks it almost 
<4 no wonder that some call Christ fallible." 

The doctor refers to the mistranslated text in Philipp., 
-chap. 2d, that "Christ thought it not robbery to be equal 
with God." St. Paul did not say that. The Revised ver- 
sion, though of Nicenist preferences, gives it thus : Christ 
"counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God." 
A better interpretation will be that though Christ stood 
before the eyes of men endued with the divine faculty of 
performing miracles, and so was like to God, he made no 
personally advantageous use of that distinction, but took 
upon him the character of a servant, for which self-humil- 
iation he was rewarded by God and given a name before 
which all men must bow and every tongue confess (what?) 
that Jesus Christ is (not God but) Lord, and all finally to 
the glory of God the Father. Whoever imbibes error 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 7/ 

from the gross mistranslation in verse 6, may find an. 
antidote in verse u. 

As to Christ being ' ' a mere man, ' ' that is all that by 
the constitution of his nature Moses and the prophets, 
Christ and his Apostles, ever claimed him to be. But that 
did not make him any the less the Son of God and Saviour 
of the world. (Acts, 3: 22 to 26th ; Acts, 5: 29 to 32.) His 
true distinction arose out of his sinless obedience, the mat- 
ter concerning his nature being comparatively an inferior 
consideration. The more that in idea he is removed from 
being in nature a man, the further he is off from being for 
us a suitable earthly exemplar and heavenly mediator. 

Our Congregationalist teacher is sometimes so captivated, 
with one part of a text, that he overlooks the corrective to 
his ideas to be found in another part. He quotes, ' ' No man 
knoweth who the Son is but the Father, and who the Father 
is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. ' ' 
From this he argues that there are mysteries in Christ's 
nature which are not fathomed except by the Father; they 
are compared to the mysteries in the nature of the Father. 
Equally astonishing, Christ represents himself as alone- 
capable of knowing the Father." Now, the doctor's word 
"alone" flatly contradicts the Saviour's concluding clause, 
which declares the possibility of the Son's revealing the 
knowledge spoken of to men of women born. The knowl- 
is therefore not of that inscrutably mysterious character the 
doctor supposes, and may have nothing in connection with 
those Athanasian ' ' mysteries ' ' which were set up at the 
Council of Nice, and which have kept mankind so many 
dreary centuries entwined, like Laocoon and his sons, with 
hateful and pestilent superstitions. Having superseded the 
the Apostles' creed with their new fabrication, free scope 
was given to the most extravagant fancies, which were 
nailed down upon the acceptance of mankind by ruthless 
penalties and persecutions. 

So far we go with a comparison of Nicenist theology with 
the Word of God. We propose to give some attention to- 
the soteriology, or salvation doctrines presented in the 
Nicenist system. The Bible leaves us in no doubt about 
the fall of our first parents, from a state of innocence and 
friendship with heaven, to one of disobedience and disloy- 
alty towards their Maker. They distrusted His words and 
believed the falsehoods of another. This was their fall, and 
the cause of their losing God's approving favor. It was the 
fruitful cause of the wanderings, the sins, and sufferings of 
countless millions to-day and in all time. Can a return to* 



78 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

the favor of God be retraced, if the forgiving mercy and 
Spirit of God will permit it? Blessed be God, such a return 
is even invited; God, the offended One, proffering the invi- 
tation and indicating the way of restoration. 

In speaking on the subject of salvation, it will not be amiss 
to inquire, first, From what do men hope to be saved ? Is 
it from natural death, that is to say, the death of the body? 
No man expects this. All men are sure that, sooner or 
later, and at no very distant day at the farthest, physical 
death will strike every one of us. It is plain, then, that 
though we may lawfully strive to protract the hour of our 
departure to the latest possible moment, the last moment 
cannot be evaded. Sin entered into the world and death 
by sin. All have sinned, and come short of that perfect 
obedience which is the glory of God. All, therefore, must 
die and give their bodies back to the dust. Christ, then, 
did not come to shield man from natural death, which is 
the penalty appended to the breach of the divine law. Even 
Christ's meritorious self-surrender and sacrifice, perfect as 
it was, could not do that. The divine fiat must have its 
way, and is utterly inevitable. Our first parents ate, in- 
deed, the fruit of the forbidden tree of good and evil, but 
they failed of tasting the fruit of the tree of life. This 
brought down upon them the unrelieved weight of the 
dread penalty, " in the day that thou eatest thereof thou 
shalt surely die." Still, man is a duplex being. His mortal 
body envelops an immortal soul. Created originally in the 
image of God, man's spiritual part will inherit the divine 
immortality; or, at all events, the book of God gives no 
intimation that after the general resurrection the human 
soul will ever cease to be self-conscious. How, then, shall 
it survive ? In the divine favor, or out of it ? This is a 
tremendous inquiry, the very greatest of all questions to 
every soul of man. After the failure of the first denizens 
of the earth to obey the dictates of their better conscience 
they fell down to depths of corruption, violence, and wick- 
edness, no longer tolerable even to the forbearing patience 
of heaven ; that is to say, after 1650 years of such abandon- 
ment, all living creatures, with very minute exceptions, were 
swept out of existence by a universal watery deluge. On 
the renewal of the earth under better auspices, God set on 
foot a scheme of mercy for the benefit of the souls he had 
interposed to save. 

Before we go farther it might not be inopportune to 
remark that in the world before the flood there does not 
appear to have been any organized system of moral and 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 79 

spiritual education for mankind. They seem to have been 
left to their native instincts, and the ever-available oppor- 
tunities of assistance from God's Holy Spirit, for we see 
that Enoch found means to reach a degree of excellence so 
high that God released him from the penalty of temporal 
death, whereby Enoch gave evidence to his cotemporaries 
that there is another world than the material one. 

It would not do, then, to leave mankind any longer to 
the mercy of their merely natural instincts. There must 
be a system of moral and spiritual instruction, and for this 
God laid a foundation in the call of Abraham out of the Ur 
of the Chaldees. In Abraham all the families of the earth 
were to be blessed, for he was a man whose loving trust in 
God had been tested in a severe and remarkable manner. 
His progeny, through his more immediate offspring, Isaac 
and Jacob, or Israel, were gathered into a choice portion of 
the fertile land of Egypt where they had an opportunity of 
becoming in the course of more than four hundred years a 
numerous people. Whilst the mass of mankind were 
steeped in heathen ignorance and corruption, means were 
adopted by which this Abrahamic or Hebrew family should 
become a receptacle of the knowledge of the One True 
God and of His will, making them the salt, or saving ele- 
ment, of the whole earth. Moses, raised up by God in 
due time to be their leader and champion, demanded, under 
the divine authority supported by a series of signal miracles, 
the release of the Hebrew people from Egyptian servitude 
and their departure to a land where they might uninter- 
ruptedly serve God. Numerous were the promises of the 
Egyptian king to comply with the demand of the Israeli tish 
leader and just as numerous were Pharaoh's refusals to fulfil 
his engagements. The last great pressure brought to bear 
against Pharaoh's stubborn reluctance was the simultaneous 
privation of life in the case of every individual first-born of 
the families of Egypt and of the first-born of their cattle; 
the families of the Israelites quite escaping. This escape 
was obtained through obedience to God's premonitory com- 
mand, by his servant Moses, that on an appointed evening 
each Hebrew family should kill a lamb or kid of a year 
old, without blemish, saving the blood, with which by the 
dipping into it of a bush of the plant called in our lan- 
guage hyssop, (in Hebrew izob,) the two side-posts and 
the lintel overhead of the door of every dwelling should be 
stricken. Also it was commanded that no one should leave 
a dwelling till morning. ' ' When, ' ' says the sacred record, 
"the Lord, in passing through Egypt, saw the blood upon 



80 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

the lintel and side-posts, He passed over the door and suf- 
fered not his destroying angel to enter and smite the occu- 
pants. " Hence this great occasion of Egyptian punish - 
ishraent and Israelitish deliverance is called the Passover, 
and has been annually commemorated by the Hebrew 
people from that day to this, or more than three thousand 
three hundred and seventy years. It will be impossible to 
overlook the peculiar provision of divine wisdom and 
goodness in ordaining this deliverance of the Israelites. 
They were to use the occasion to prepare themselves food 
for a sudden journey; they were to eat it as in haste and to 
be personally girded around, with staff in hand, ready for 
the start. There were wisdom and goodness in this; and 
in the premonition to strike the side-posts and lintels of 
each doorway with blood, there was a signification to the 
people of all nations and times that man's deliverance from 
the destroyer must be by the shedding of blood, typical 
of the surrender of life. For that is the only acceptable 
equivalent, reparation, or atonement for sin, according to 
the irreversible law delivered in Leviticus 17: 11 — "it is the 
blood that maketh atonement for the soul." The Israel- 
ites were saved from destruction by the Egyptians by no- 
severe personal task, no painful exertion of their own, but 
by a simple and easy compliance with the ordination of 
God. They had faith in the divine command. 

When the Lord Jesus Christ was keeping, in pursuance 
of what became him as a faithful Jew, his last passover on 
earth, he took bread and gave thanks, and breaking the 
bread, distributed to his disciples and said, Take, eat ; 
this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, 
and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it ; for this is 
my blood of the new testament, or covenant, which is shed 
for many for the remission of sins. As their bodies ab- 
sorbed and appropriated the blood and the wine in the way 
of bodily sustenance, so were the souls of the disciples to 
be nourished and their spiritual life sustained by feeding 
on the body of truth he represented. Christ was the anti- 
type or reality of which the paschal lamb was the type or 
shadow. He was slain to furnish spiritual aliment for the 
journey from this world to the Canaan above, and to yield 
the preservative blood for the remission of sins, and conse- 
quent protection from the destroying agencies that await 
on rebellion against God. He was and is the Christian's 
passover. The bread, representing Christ's body, was 
broken, the wine, representing Christ's blood, was shed, 
not for himself, but for his people — for his church. His 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 8l 

death, followed by his resurrection, carried him into heav- 
en, where he stands in the holy of holies before the mercy 
seat, in the very presence of the majesty of God, to act as 
mediating high priest to intercede with the Father for the 
frailties and pardonable transgressions of his people. Not 
the blood of bulls and of goats, as under the provision of 
the L,evitical institution, was what he offered, but it was 
his own precious blood, or life, freely surrendered to the 
will of God. And this offering God can freely accept in 
the post-resurrection time, whilst the humble follower of 
Christ will faithfully use on earth every means, and be- 
come continually more and more like his glorified Master. 
We perceive in this that the original law of God is fully 
vindicated in the bodily death of every man, whilst under 
the new covenant sealed by Christ's blood in behalf of his 
brethren of the human race, of whom he is the representa- 
tive, God's promise of salvation to all who will comply 
with the requirements of Christ's laws can have full effect. 
God's mercy, let it be repeated, is free to act in behalf of 
the souls of men, the honor of His law being amply vin- 
dicated by the infliction of the penalty of death upon their 
bodies. Yet this is not without terms, those terms being 
the true acceptance of Christ as master, legislator, exem- 
plar, and L,ord of the life and conduct. This is just what 
the Bible means by believing in Christ and seeking salva- 
tion through him. It is thus that Christ becomes the 
Saviour of the world. Death could not hold Christ in 
its benumbing grasp, since Christ's righteous obedience 
opened for himself and the race in which he held brother- 
hood an entrance into the kingdom of God. He regained 
Paradise for mankind. 

Such, then, appears to be the soteriology of the New 
Testament, viz., repentance towards a justly-offended yet 
forgiving and gracious God our Creator, and faith in 
Christ's once effectual reconciling, or atoning, sacrifice on 
the cross, and present continuous intercessory work. This 
was the sum, the compendium, of Paul's teaching for three 
years to his beloved flocks in the churches of Ephesus and 
regions of Asia Minor. 

In his tenth chapter to the Romans Paul indicates the 
nature of the faith preached by himself and the other Apos- 
tles, namely, That whosoever openly acknowledges in the 
world's face the lordship or legislative authority of Jesus 
of Nazareth over the life and conduct, and unfeignedly 
believes that God raised him from the dead, shall be saved. 
In this our day these are easy terms. In the day of St. 



82 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Paul the same terms must have been often accompanied 
with very considerable peril not only to personal liberty, 
but to life itself. The Apostle Peter, with equal succinct- 
ness, placed the conditions of salvation in repentance and 
baptism into the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of 
sins, with that comforting benefit to follow as a seal of the 
divine acceptance, the gift of the Holy Ghost. And lastly, 
Christ himself, more briefly, but not less comprehensively 
than his Apostles, said, as a part of his last communication 
with his disciples, "He that believeth the gospel and is 
baptized, shall be saved ; and he that believeth not shall 
be damned." In all these cases it must, of course, be 
understood that both the repentance and the faith are to be 
heartfelt and sincere. Neither God nor Christ can be de- 
ceived a hair's breath. 

It is not to be doubted that declarations such as the fore- 
going from the lips of Christ himself and of his two great 
Apostles are conclusive as to the terms and conditions of 
human salvation for every soul of man. The mental con- 
stitutions of many of the race are not suited to abstract 
investigations, for which reason the foregoing practical 
directions comprise the substance of what is necessary in 
every case. Wayfaring men, though worldly unwise, need 
not err therein. Others of the race, differently constituted, 
instinctively crave the reasons why the methods of salvation 
are what they are. They want the philosophy of salvation. 
Nor is it very hard to find, seeing we have before us the 
free and open Word of God. If, in our endeavor to state 
this there be some repetition of previous ideas and texts of 
scripture, we entreat forbearance. 

The philosophy of salvation, or of soteriology, may 
perhaps be most readily reached by a preliminary reference 
to the great statute book and history of the ways of God 
with man. When man, a moral and responsible being, 
was put upon the earth he was placed under law, or a line 
of limitation. Breach of this law, trespass beyond this 
line, was disobedience or sin, to be followed by the inevi- 
table penalty of a forfeiture of life. God did not create 
man and surround him with the choicest blessings to be 
repaid with ingratitude and rebellion. Man was tempted 
by a deficient trust in God's word to break the law, and 
thenceforth became obnoxious to the penalty of death. 

This brought forward a new question, What shall become 
of the two sinning beings? Shall the}- be immediately 
cut off, or permitted to stock the earth with their offspring 
under an opportunity of learning obedience and regaining 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 83 

the favor of heaven? The latter alternative was adopted 
by the God of mercy, but after between 1600 and 1700 
years of trial, so exceedingly few were the instances of 
obedience, and so numerous the transgressions, that it is 
written, "God repented that He had made man, and it 
grieved Him at His heart." One single human being, 
Noah, found favor with God, on which account God 
resolved on saving him and his, but abolishing all the rest. 
Then came the punishment of the flood, annihilating, save 
Noah and his family, the whole race of man. 

Though Noah and his family were preserved, sin had 
not been entirely dislodged from the world. As before, 
sin was always followed by its penalty, though that had 
been so terribly evidenced in the flood. Then arose the 
further question, Shall death be perpetual and God's high 
purpose in creating man be frustrated? God had determined 
otherwise. After the reintroduction of mankind upon 
the earth there were doubtless here and there centres of 
devotion and service acceptable to the Most High ; but it 
was the wise and gracious purpose of God to constitute a 
system or order by which the duties of man to God should 
be made matter of instruction and iteration. Hence the 
call of Abraham, the trial of his faith, the sojourn of his 
progeny in Egypt till they had grown to the proportions 
of a nation ; their establishment in Canaan, the delivery 
to them of a body of laws suitable for their personal and 
national guidance, their wanderings and punishments for 
infidelity to the wise and holy laws that had been delivered 
to them. Among those laws there was announced one 
involving a principle of the most important character and 
of very far-reaching effect. It is that we have mentioned 
in Leviticus 17: 11, in the few but commanding words, " It 
is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul," that 
sacred element because it is the only commodity accepted 
in the exchange for sin, for it is authoritively written, 
' ' Without shedding of blood there is no remission ' ' of sin. 
Blood is the symbol or representative of life, which God 
alone can originate and which alone will He accept in 
acquittance for the debt of sin. 

During the existence of the Hebrew commonwealth, of 
which God was the Supreme Head, transgressions and sins 
were atoned for by the sacrifice of various animals, whose 
blood was poured out. But the system proved not to be 
perfect in its effects, and could not have an influence in 
any state of being beyond this world. In due course of 
time, therefore, there was one born of the stock of Abraham ; 



84 XAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

"born of a woman, born under the Levitical law," and 
therefore subject to its obligations. This was Jesus of 
Nazareth. Now, the Lord God had said, "All souls are 
mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son 
is mine ; the soul that sinneth it shall die. ' ' Contra- 
riwise, the soul that hath not sinned is under no obligation 
to die. Now, as a matter of fact, the life and conduct of 
Jesus were sinless. His bitterest enemies, with all their 
arts and efforts, totally failed to convict him of any trans- 
gression. An impartial witness, Pontius Pilate, the Roman 
procurator, said to Christ's accusers, "Ye have brought 
this man unto me as one that perverteth the people, and 
behold I, having examined him before you, have found no 
fault in this man touching those things whereof they 
accuse him ; no, nor yet Herod, for I sent you to him ; 
and lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. ' ' And 
in the like manner was the testimony to his innocency 
everywhere. ' ' He went about doing good to the bodies 
and souls of men." Now, here we have a man, free from 
sin himself, and therefore not obnoxious to death for any 
wrong of his own. If he were willing to die for others, 
and God were willing to accept his life's blood in "atone- 
ment for the souls ' ' of others who had sinned, who could 
object to the legitimacy of the transaction, especially when 
we bear in mind that every sinner thus redeemed will 
have paid, or must hereafter pay, the additional penalty 
of his own physical death according to the terms of the 
inexorable law? For Christ's blood makes no pretension 
to being shed to save from the death of the body, but 
only that of the soul. 

That Christ was willing to die to save his people from 
the penal consequences of their sins is evident from his 
picturing the impending torture of his body and shedding 
of his blood by the breaking the bread and dividing the 
wine at the last supper. Had he been disinclined to yield 
his life, all the legions of heaven would have been ready 
to sustain his refusal. Then, on the other side, the resur- 
rection of Christ marked the divine acceptance of Christ's 
oblation, so that nothing is lacking to the entire com- 
pleteness of the salvation by him so far as God and Christ 
are concerned. Christ can save unto the uttermost all that 
come unto God by him. Let, then, none of his people be 
deficient on their part in that faith and those works proper 
to a Christian. 

The scriptures make us assured that Jesus Christ will be 
mankind's final judge. Could there be one so fit? Him- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 85 

self man, knowing what was in man, and having been 
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and in all points 
tempted as we are, how just and proper the selection! 
Whether as high priest for intercession, or a righteous 
judge to determine degrees of guilt, none so suitable as 
Jesus Christ. 

But there is yet another aspect in which this subject 
might be viewed. Christ was a born Jew ; a member of 
the Israelitish system and an element of its polity, and as 
it pleased God that all salvation should be through Jewish 
forms, Christ was still all appropriate. On earth Christ 
was not a priest to exercise a merely typical priesthood, but 
was called to heaven to be a priest most real and effectual 
after the pre-Levitical and high order of Melchisedec, king 
of peace. Christ was thus in every point of view before 
the mercy-seat in right of a divine vocation; of his perfect 
offering of his own precious blood and life ; of himself. 

On the whole, then, we perceive that God can be just to 
his own honor and dignity and a justifier of him who trusts 
in the acceptableness of Christ's atonement. The spirit of 
Christ's life and priesthood is a thoroughly hearty and 
loving concurrence in the law and will of God. ' ' Sacrifice 
and offering," said he, "Thou would' st not; then said I, L,o, 
I come to do Thy will, O God." 

The scripture testimonies to Christ are numberless. He 
paid the ransom of his blood to rescue his people from their 
dread responsibility to the divine law, blood being the only 
commodity exchangeable in the case. Christ only had the 
blood for the purpose. Of all the millions upon the earth 
Christ was the single being that could rightfully call his 
soul his own. Every other soul was forfeit ; mortgaged 
beyond its owner's redemption. His only was free to be 
disposed of as he would. His people are thus said to have 
been redeemed, bought back, released from the bonds of 
sin and sin's penalties. Thus they are doubly his debtors ; 
debtors by the beneficence and example of his life ; debtors 
even yet more heavily by his most generous and self-sacri- 
ficing death. Christ is also the propitiation for our sins, 
and, by God's acceptance, for the sins (if repudiated) of the 
whole world. His people's robes are washed white and 
clean from the stains of sin in the Saviour's blood. Thus 
purified, Christ's people become conditioned to receive their 
crowns of righteousness, and with them an entrance upon 
life eternal. 

After this digression we return to our reverend Congre- 
gationalist doctor, and gather the views of his church on 



86 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

soteriology. In two separate places, at the distance of four- 
teen pages apart, he lays down the principle that Christ's 
atonement derives " its infinite worth and efficacy from the 
presence of the divine nature in his person," a presence 
which he has quite failed in his attempt to prove. Com- 
plementary to this he also remarks, following Anselm's 
lead, ' ' how impossible it is, in the nature of things, for a 
creature to atone for sin." On this point between us let 
appeal be made not to some indefinable " nature of things," 
but to the last arbiter, the Word of God. The earliest in- 
timation, according to the general belief, is that in Genesis, 
3:15, where the sin-dispelling power of Christ is referred 
to in the saving that " the seed of the woman shall bruise 
the serpent's head." Is not the "seed of the woman" 
indisputably human? Again, when Moses, in Dent. 18: 15, 
foretold that the Lord God would raise up unto the children 
of Israel a prophet from the midst of them, of their breth- 
ren, like unto himself, " into whose mouth God would put 
his words," it would not be easy to define a being more 
decidedly human than the promised prophet, which is 
Christ. In the 53d chapter of Isaiah, which is wholly de- 
voted to a prophecy concerning Christ, the future Saviour 
is portrayed as " a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief;" also, as one who "had done no violence, neither 
w T as any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to 
bruise him ; He hath put him to grief; when thou shalt 
make his soul an offering for sin.''' 1 In the 32d chapter of 
the same prophet it is said that "a man shall be as a hiding 
place from the wind and a covert from the tempest. " " By 
his knowledge," saith God, "shall my righteous servant 
justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities." 

In all these testimonies and allusions no hint of deity is 
given; no " divine nature " intimated; but all is human. 
So in the New Testament the Apostle Peter teaches that 
the only name given among men whereby they can be saved 
is the name of the man Jesus whose domicile was at Naza- 
reth. Paul, at Antioch, in Pisidia, taught his hearers that 
Jesus was of the seed or family of David, and that through 
him, thus humanly defined, come remission of sins and 
justification from all things from which mankind cannot 
be justified by the Mosaic law, which demands to be kept 
intact. Paul kept back from his hearers nothing that was 
profitable to them, and shunned not to declare the whole 
counsel of God. In his great Epistle to the Romans Paul 
shows how by " one man sin entered into the world, and 
death by sin," and how by " the righteousness of one came 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 87 

the free gift upon all men unto justification of life ; for if 
through the offence of one many be dead, much more the 
grace of God, and the gift by grace which is by one man, 
Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." So that Paul 
was wholly ignorant concerning that ' ' infinite worth and 
efficacy ' ' arising from the ' ' divine nature and supreme 
deity of the Son," taught by old Anselm and our Congre- 
gationalist, for he described all the ' ' abounding grace and 
gift of righteousness ' ' which come to the people of God to 
the "obedience and righteousness" of the "one man" 
Jesus Christ. In that most striking chapter, the 15th of 
the 1st Corinthians, Paul states that "since by man came 
death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead ; 
Christ, as the first fruits, ' ' rising first, and then afterwards, 
at Christ's second coming, Christ's true followers will rise. 
Not a hint does Paul furnish about any ' ' divine nature ' ' 
or " supreme deity " in Christ as having any office, oper- 
ation, or function whatsoever. The Apostles never taught 
as does our Congregationalist, that one part of God required 
to be sacrificed to another part of God, or that God had to 
be sacrificed to himself. Scripture has no tendency that 
way, and puts no strain upon human reason or common 
sense. 

Paul elsewhere teaches that there is ' ' one mediator 
between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave 
himself a ransom for all," yet the Congregationalist says it 
is ' ' impossible in the nature of things for a creature, a 
man, to be a ransom or to atone for sin," in which the 
Congregationalist coincides with Anselm but disagrees 
with Paul. The reverse is the case with our humble selves, 
who differ with Anselm but coincide with Paul. 

It will be observed that the scripture doctrine of salva- 
tion does not suppose that Christ's sufferings and death 
constituted an amount of punishment inflicted upon him 
equal to the quantity of punishment which the redeemed 
would otherwise unitedly endure to all eternity. They do 
not say, as some Nicenists do, that Christ suffered a penalty 
equivalent to the sum of the penalties that, but for him, 
would be suffered by the multitude of the redeemed. Noth- 
ing so gross as that, which shuts out all idea of forgiveness 
on God's part. On this theory there is no meaning in that 
petition of the Lord' s prayer ' ' Forgive us our trespasses, ' ' 
or in the language of the Apostle John that, in case of our 
sincere confession, "God is faithful and just to forgive us 
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ' ' Christ 
intimates that forgiveness may take place both in this world 



88 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

and in that which is to come, and upon the cross he cried 
aloud for his torturers, "Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do. " 

Now, the scriptural system of salvation supposes that 
God is continually exercising the merciful quality of for- 
giveness towards the members of Christ's church through 
the intercession of the Saviour in His immediate presence. 
It is against God that sin is committed, and God only can 
forgive so as to cancel the wrong. Of course he may dele- 
gate that power. God cancels sin, and "justly," as St. 
John remarks, when the penitent sinner, lamenting his 
past infidelity, sues for pardon with the earnest purpose in 
his heart to cease to do evil and learn to do well. Heaven 
takes due account of our frailty, and well knows that we 
were born under many a tendency to be and to do wrong. If, 
then, a new and right purpose has providentially sprung up 
within us; if we are humbly willing to accept the gracious 
plan of redemption and recovery which the New Testament 
holds forth; if we are baptized into Christ and to the best 
of our ability with prayer and supplication live after his 
laws and commands; then will God send down His Holy 
Spirit into our hearts, writing His will in our minds, and 
greatly aid our path to eternal peace. Thus by his life 
of pure precept and holy example, followed by a death 
exhibiting a perfect trust in God and assurance of a blissful ' 
immortality; by an ascension into heaven itself and the 
exercise of mediatorship and intercession there on our 
behalf, Jesus is entitled to be regarded, obeyed, honored 
and loved as a Saviour indeed. And, let it not be forgotten, 
these inestimable services, all performed without trench- 
ing upon the supreme sovereignty of the Infinite I AM, 
Jehovah, the LORD. All took and takes place to the l k glory 
of God, the Father." 

If there is no scriptural basis for the notion that the 
"efficacy and infinite worth" of Christ's "sufferings and 
death" must be referred "to a divine nature in Christ," 
neither is it rational. For what is there in deity that can 
suffer, or become the victim in a sacrifice? How can a 
Divine Being shed his blood, seeing he is pure spirit and 
without flesh and blood? Can deity be bruised? Can the 
soul of deity be made an offering for sin? Can the soul of 
deity be poured out unto death so that deity may die? 
But one answer and that a negative can be made to these 
queries. Atonement, or reconciliation, can be made by 
man only, and by man only was it made in the person of 
Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He stood as the head and repre- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 89 

sentative of our human race, the "captain of our salvation 
made perfect through sufferings, ' ' and who ' ' by the grace 
of God tasted death for every man ' ' that wills to be repre- 
sented by him, has been baptized into him, and lived con- 
sistently since. Besides all which, when did deity sin that 
it should be required to make atonement? When one was 
required to open the great book and loosen its seals, who 
responded but ' ' the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who was 
slain and hath redeemed his people to God by his blood 
out of every kindred and tongue, and people and nation ' ' ? 
None of this can be predicated of any but a member of the 
human race. 

Notwithstanding that the teachings of Christ and his 
Apostles leave no doubt as to that from which mankind re- 
quire to be ransomed or rescued, namely, from the mastery 
of sin, alienation of heart from God, ruin and death eter- 
nal, — the ancient professors and writers on Christianity, 
who are called the "Fathers," seem to have been no little 
befogged and puzzled about it. Failure to study the scrip- 
tures in a proper spirit and temper must have been the 
cause of this obscurity, which was to a considerable extent 
its own punishment. But upon this subject we prefer 
adopting the statements of others, and copy from the 
article on Atonement in the International Cyclopaedia, as 
follows, viz. : "In accordance with the full and explicit 
teaching of holy scripture, we find the sufferings and death 
of Christ were ever regarded as of primary and essential 
importance in his work of redemption, but notwitstanding 
this, we look in vain throughout the early centuries of the 
Christian church for anything like a systematic develop- 
ment of the doctrine of the Atonement. The germs of the 
doctrine existed, but without any logical connexion or 
clearness. The early church of fathers dwell with a sort 
of inspired devotion upon those facts of the gospel which 
represent Christ as the sacrifice for our sins ; as the ransom 
paid for our redemption ; as our deliverance from the 
power of Satan ; as the restorer to mankind of whatever 
was lost by the fall of Adam, but they seldom attempt to 
show how those blessed results connect themselves with 
the sufferings and death of Christ ; neither do they show 
in what manner the atonement has objectively been made, 
nor how it is brought to the experience of its individual 
subjects. 

During the first four centuries there appeared no cer- 
tainty of opinion as to whether those sufferings and death 
of Christ were a ransom paid to God or the devil ! The 



90 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

latter supposition is the more prevalent, and is shared by 
Origen and Augustine. Gregory of Nyssa explains this 
opinion by saying that the devil consented to receive Jesus 
as a ransom because he regarded him as more than an 
equivalent for all those under his (Satan's) power ; but 
that, notwithstanding his subtilty, he was outwitted, for, 
owing to the humiliation in which Christ was veiled, 
Satan did not fully recognize him as the Son of God, and, 
consequently, w r as himself deceived. But, having con- 
sented to receive him as a ransom for mankind, he was 
righteously deprived of his dominion over man, whilst he 
could not retain Jesus when he discovered him to be the 
Holy One of God, being horrified and tormented by his 
holiness. 

Athanasius first of all successfully controverted this no- 
tion, and maintained that the ransom was paid to God. He 
argued that as God had threatened to punish transgressors 
with death, he could but execute his threat. But then it was 
not becoming the character of God to allow his purpose in 
the creation of man to be frustrated by an imposition prac- 
tised upon Him by the devil. The only expedient, there- 
fore, which remained for man's deliverance from death was 
the incarnation and sacrifice of the Logos in his stead, by 
which the justice and veracity of God would be maintained, 
man delivered, the law fulfilled, and the power of the devil 
broken. Tertullian never uses the term ' ' satisfaction ' ' 
with respect to Christ's atonement for sin in the sense of 
vicarious satisfaction, but only in the sense of making 
amends for our sins by confession and repentance. 

But these ideas remained in a most imperfect and alto- 
gether undeveloped condition till Anselm of Canterbury 
reduced them to order and presented them in logical con- 
sistency. We must regard Anselm, therefore, as the author, 
at least as to its form, of the doctrine of vicarious satisfac- 
tion, which, under various modifications, has ever since 
been held as the orthodox doctrine of the church. The 
infinite guilt which man had contracted, by the dishonor 
of his sin, against the infinite great God, could be atoned 
for by no mere creature. Only the God-man, Christ Jesus, 
could render to God the infinite satisfaction required. God 
only can satisfy Himself. The human nature of Christ en- 
ables him to incur, the infinity of his divine nature to pay, 
this debt. But it was incumbent on Christ, as man, to order 
his life according to the law of God. The obedience of his 
life, therefore, was not able to render satisfaction for our 
guilt. But although he was under obligation to live in 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 0,r 

obedience to the law, as the holy one he was under no obli- 
gation to die. Seeing, then, that he, nevertheless, volun- 
tarily surrendered his infinitely precious life to the honor 
of God, a recompense from God became his due, and his 
recompense consists in the forgiveness of the sins of his 
brethren. In this form of the doctrine we are taught the 
necessity of an active vicarious satisfaction. But Anselm 
nowhere teaches the passive satisfaction ; he nowhere says 
that Christ endured the punishment of men. Nor do we 
find in his writings the development of the subjective side 
of the doctrine — namely, how the satisfaction rendered to> 
God mediates the atonement in the experience of the 
believer. 

According to Anselm, the satisfaction rendered by Christ 
was greater than the guilt for which he atoned; and it needed 
to be greater, for the payment of the debt due to God gave 
men no claim to the favor of God. Thomas Aquinas and 
his followers maintained Augustine's opinion of the infinite- 
value of the blood of Christ, rendering it more than suffi- 
cient; whilst the Scotists maintained that it was sufficient 
only because God was pleased to regard it as sufficient. 

Luther's opinion is that man's righteousness is the " im- 
puted righteousness " of Christ. Dr. Trench's idea is that 
' ' Christ' s sacrifice was vicarious. He died not merely for 
the good of, but in the room of and in the stead of, others. 
He tasted death for them. He did this of his own free will. 
He saw that nothing else would overcome their sinful per- 
versity and wilful obduracy, and that this would be effectual 
to do so. ' ' 

A review of this statement will disclose most of the dis- 
agreements it exhibits with the letter and spirit of the 
Bible. If the early centuries of the Christian church were 
without a "systematic development of the doctrine of the 
atonement" it was because they had turned their backs 
upon the ample teachings of the Bible, and were casting 
about to patch out their other inventions and so get a com- 
plete system which they could feel was all their own, and 
to which they could invite the submission of mankind. It 
seems they did not find this so easy as it was to bedizen 
and furbish out the good old Apostles' creed in their Nicene 
fabric ; to dogmatize about the person of Christ, and lay 
down novelties to be forced, on pain of banishment or 
other severer penalties, upon popular acceptance. The 
uncertainty of the "Fathers" "during the first four cen- 
turies ' ' whether the ' ' ransom ' ' residing in the sufferings 
and death of Christ was paid to God or the devil, verges 



•92 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

on the ludicrous. That men of the reputations of Origen. 
Augustine, bishop of Hippo, and Gregory of Nyssa, with 
an alleged majority of their cotemporaries, should have 
supposed the ransom to be the devil's right, must let in no 
inconsiderable light upon the degenerate ideas then pre- 
vailing. The notion of Athanasius that the ransom was 
paid to God (he got near but did not distinctly see that it 
was paid to the authority and dignity of the divine law) is 
extremely little in accordance with what the Bible incul- 
cates relative to the character and ways of God, for God 
does not desire to cause pain, privation and suffering for 
their own sake, or because He is irresistibly sovereign, but 
for the best good of those who are to be educated and im- 
proved by those expedients. God is the infinitely wise and 
beneficent Father of His rational offspring. The spirit of 
Athanasius has been reproduced in the ideas of John Calvin 
and President Edwards, who appear to have thought it a 
safe thing to urge the divine character as rather that of a 
stern ruler than of a beneficent Father. Athanasius 1 s 
assumption that the "only remaining expedient for man's 
deliverance was the incarnation and sacrifice of the Logos," 
is an assumption more conformable with his own inventions 
and dogmas than with the truth of God and the doctrines 
of the Bible. If the vindication of the divine authority 
consists in the due and universal execution of the primal 
sentence pronounced against sin, viz. , that death is its sure 
requital, then the divine benevolence is left open to operate 
on the conditions of the new covenant, which conditions 
are a cordial belief in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, 
and mediatorship of Christ, with a steady obedience to the 
institutions and moral and spiritual precepts of his Gospel. 
No man is authorized to demand for the ' ' maintenance of 
the justice and veracity " of God more than God himself 
demands. " Blessed," said Christ, "are they that hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." 
A hearty desire engages the favor of heaven, which here or 
hereafter, and quite possibly in both states, will reward the 
desire with the object it sincerely craves. The principle 
of pardon, forgiveness, mercy to the genuinely penitent 
and meek, has vastly too little consideration and weight in 
the systems of Athanasius and his followers, yet the scrip- 
tures abound with that blessed mercy which " endureth 
forever." As to Anselm's doctrines, they are but natural 
offshoots from the Nicene basis, which is self-complimented 
with the title of "orthodoxy." We have seen that the 
"man," Christ Jesus, and not the imaginary and unscrip- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 93 

tural "God-man," is competent to supply all the "ran- 
som" that is called for by the law of that God, who will 
have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of 
the truth. The fond notion or analogy about an ' ' infinite ' ' 
satisfaction being called for by God because He is an infinite 
being, finds no encouragement from the Bible. God know- 
eth our frame and remembereth that we are dust. He 
proportions the burden to the back that is to carry it ; be- 
sides all which God gave us the constitution and nature we 
possess. That other notion that Christ, as finite man, 
incurred a debt which he alone as infinite God could pay, 
(2. <?., pay in part to himself,) may have captivating features 
for some minds, but it is thoroughly alien to the Word of 
God. Whilst it is undoubtedly and absolutely true that 
Jesus had done nothing to subject him to the common 
sentence of death, and his death took place by his own 
consent, still, had he not died he could not have been 
Christ, and his refusal to die would have been contrary to 
the will and purpose of his Heavenly Father. And although 
Jesus had all along contemplated and spoken of his death, 
yet, when the trying moment actually arrived, his human 
nature thrice spoke distinctly forth in deprecation of the 
bitter cup presented to his taste, though concurrently 
therewith his soul displayed from its inmost depths the 
presence of a principle stronger than the love of life and 
dread of agony and death, that is to say, the principle 
of immovable rest and trust in the will and love of God. 
He said to his recalcitrant disciple Peter: " The cup 
which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ? " 
He might indeed, without then dying, have continued 
to be the good-man Jesus, but in order to be Christ, 
God's anointed and Saviour of the World, every way 
perfect in precept and example, Jesus was under high 
obligation to die. God had determined on the death of 
His Son, and that made his death quite obligatory. Can 
any doubt this? What was Christ's own testimony on this 
head ? In reasoning with those disciples on their way to 
Emmaus he said, ' ' Ought not Christ to have suffered these 
things and to enter into his glory? " — into which he could 
not have entered but for the antecedent sufferings. Again, 
' ' Thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer 
and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance 
and remission of sins should be preached in his name among 
all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Christ needed to 
die for every man, that every man may be baptized into his- 
death, and so to die to the present world and rise again in 
and with Christ to a life immortal. Now, he that thus 



94 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

died and rose again was the man Jesus of Nazareth ; the 
resurrected man, with hands and feet and a complete bodily 
organization, and not a spirit, much less, a deity. Through 
this man, with whom his Apostles " ate and drank after he 
rose from the dead, 1 ' "repentance and remission of sins 
were to be preached among all nations," no matter what 
Athanasius and Anselm, and similar self-appointed creed- 
makers, might say or think. 

Anselm' s idea that Christ's satisfaction can be measured 
by the side " of the guilt for which he atoned " and is found 
to exceed it by a necessary overplus, suggests that he must 
have had a table of weights and measures by which to 
estimate guilt and righteousness. It is the said overplus 
only, according to Anselm, which entitles us toa u claim 
to the favor of God." Thus God is inferentially regarded 
as a stringent creditor and stern taskmaster, who demands 
to the uttermost, and whose unrelenting severity is miti- 
gated only by the abounding virtue and excellence of 
Christ's satisfaction ; from which there follows an inevi- 
table contrast between the characters of God and of Christ, 
to the advantage of the latter. Were this as thus repre- 
sented, the testimony of the scriptures to the forbearing 
mercy of God, to his loving-kindness, pity, and compassion, 
would be inaccurate and futile. With almost no doubt it 
may be concluded that to these teachings should be referred 
that noticeable preponderance of praise and thanksgiving 
offered to Christ in hymn books and poetical compositions 
over what is rendered to God. Christ is glorified as the 
practical benefactor. God's own declaration is virtually 
forgotten that ' ' the Lord God is merciful and gracious, 
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keep- 
ing mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, 
and sin ; but that will by no means clear the guilty" — 
meaning, we dare suppose, the incorrigibly, incurably 
guilty. Here is forgiveness for the penitent and not a 
thought of a satisfying equivalent. David prayed to God 
to ' ' remember His tender mercies and loving-kindnesses, 
for they have been ever of old." " Remember not," said 
he, " the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions ; accord- 
ing to thy mercy, remember thou me for thy goodness' 
sake, O Lord." " Good and upright is the Lord ; therefore 
will he teach sinners in the way. Look upon my affliction 
and my pain, and forgive all my sins. ' ' What is the mean- 
ing of the word " forgive," but to treat the wrongdoer as 
if he were innocent ? What is the meaning of the word 
' ' mercy, ' ' but the pardon and sparing of such as are ob- 
noxious to punishment ? The 103d Psalm and the 15th 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 95 

chapter of Luke's gospel justly describe these blessed ele- 
ments of the divine character. And Isaiah, ' ' The sacri- 
fices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite 
heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. ' ' But above every- 
thing, let us call to mind the Saviour's assurance that "God 
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life. ' ' The Saviour' s great excellence and 
glory consisted in his perfect concurrence with the will of 
God, cost him what of labor, endurance, agony, and suffering 
it might ; but the benignity of the divine character was the 
originating and sustaining agency in the salvation of man. 
' ' Why, ' ' asked the Saviour, ' ' callest thou me good ? There 
is none good but one, that is, God. ' ' 

In saying that Christ's sacrifice was vicarious, and that 
he tasted death instead of, or in the place of, every man, 
Dr. Trench appears to indicate that Christ's temporal death 
was a substitute for the eternal death of which his people 
were in peril. But this has nothing scriptural to sustain 
it. Doubtless Christ's sacrificial offering was essential to 
his becoming an intercessory mediator before the mercy 
seat in heaven. In that way the death on the cross be- 
comes largely a preventive of his people's eternal death. 
For, says St. John, ' ' If any man sin, we have an advocate 
with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. ' ' Not ' ' an 
advocate with the Father, ' ' because — as our Congregation - 
alist would say — of ' ' a divine nature in Christ giving 
infinite worth and efficacy to his sufferings and death," 
but because he is "Jesus Christ, the righteous." Christ's 
spotless character, and not a superhuman nature, consti- 
tutes him the world's great advocate before the court of 
heaven. 

A thought will possibly occur to some minds — If Christ 
be our advocate before the Father, then he is not the judge 
on the throne ; that highest dignity God retains, as He 
does the disposal of other dignities, and the knowledge of 
the day of judgment and certain other times and seasons, 
in His own power. Hence, when Christ told the people 
that he had power on earth to forgive sins (a power that 
was also extended to his apostles), he meant to restrict the 
power to the ' ' earth, ' ' and not to claim it as his universally. 
We see, hence, how appropriately he is called our prophet, 
priest, and king. Prophet, while conducting his ministry 
on earth ; priest, now in heaven to appear in the presence 
of God for us ; and king, subsequently to the great judg- 
ment-day, when " the restitution of all things " shall have 
taken place and his kingdom be without end. 



96 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 



The Presbyterian Church, comprising numerous 
subdivisions, is a large and respectable branch of the great 
Nicene profession. Statistics report that there are a few- 
thousands less than a million members of the Church in 
the United States, with a ministry of almost nine thousand 
individuals and twelve thousand church edifices. It is 
claimed by Presbyterians that their denomination owns 
thirty thousand church buildings over the entire world, 
with a membership of thirty millions. 

In respect to moral character, intellectual attainments, 
and all those qualities deemed creditable among men, the 
Presbyterians rank with the foremost. None are firmer in 
their attachment to their church, its doctrines and polity, 
and none more decidedly Protestant or reliable in their 
support of existing civil and religious liberty. Holding 
principles Calvinistic in the main, the tenacious and sturdy 
spirit and temper of their chief founders, John Calvin and 
John Knox, seem diffused throughout the mass, and impart 
a characteristic sternness and rigidity. A Presbyterian 
writer, referring to somebody's complaint that "Calvinism 
plies men with hammer and chisel," — admits it with exul- 
tation. ' ' It does, ' ' he says, ' ' and the result is monumental 
marble. Other systems leave men soft and dirty; Calvin- 
ism makes them of white marble to endure for ever." 
Would it could be said that Calvinism or something else 
had not endowed many of the name with marble hearts 
which could endure the infliction of terrible yet unmerited 
miseries and sufferings upon others who differed with them 
upon topics of a religious nature. It is written with an 
indelible pen on the pages of history that though Calvinists 
have invariably antagonized the Church of Rome, they 
have not, on occasion, refused to join Catholic persecutors 
in hunting down to ruin and destruction innocent men 
whose only crime has been an open and consistent advocacy 
of the pure and unsophisticated teachings of God's Word. 
Switzerland, Italy, Holland, and Poland in particular, 
testify to the persecutions perpetrated by and with the 
advice and consent of John Calvin himself, of Theodore 
Beza, of Farel, of Bullinger, and others of that ilk, too 
numerous to mention. Happily for the world at large the 
unwisdom, as well as the wickedness, of despotic cruelty 
has come to be clearly seen, especially when directed 
against the exercise of sincere and conscientious investi- 
gation of religious subjects. The most and worst done in 
the persecuting line in these days is the occasional charac- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 97 

terization of an opponent's ideas as coming from a ration- 
alist, a sceptic, unbeliever, or, with somewhat of special 
vigor, from a Socinian. Hard names have kindly taken 
the place of hard blows. 

With all their inveteracy against the Roman Church the 
Calvinists did not probe down in the days of the Reforma- 
tion, neither have they since gone deeper for and with re- 
form than to make changes in church polity, ecclesiastical 
usages and the externals of public worship. They have 
accepted and become exceedingly sturdy sticklers for the 
innovating enactments of the synod of Nice and those other 
pompously styled ' ' ecumenical ' ' synods, or councils, which 
make notorious the fourth and fifth centuries of our era. 

The written standard of faith of the Presbyterian Church 
everywhere is the Confession of the Westminster Assembly 
of Divines, which was drawn up in the year 1643 an( ^ made 
national in Scotland by act of Parliament in 1690. It con- 
sists of thirty-three divisions or chapters, very much more 
minute and voluminous than the Articles of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. In the chapter on the being of God it 
is said, ' ' There is but one only living and true God, who 
is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, with- 
out body, parts or passions, immaterial, immense, &c. , &c. , 
&c, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the 
guilty." Passing by the inconsistency of describing the 
deity as ' ' without passions, ' ' yet exercising the passion of 
hatred towards sin, the great similarity or rather identity 
of the leading article of the Episcopal Church with this 
chapter becomes evident, and particularly in the section 
which says, " In the unity of the, or this, godhead (though 
no godhead had been mentioned) there be three persons of 
one substance, power and eternity — God the Father, God 
the Son and God the Holy Ghost. " 

There must have been an unusually cogent reason for 
this close verbal coincidence of the two churches at this 
particular point, which reason probably consists in the fact 
that neither church could devise any other way that looked 
like getting out of the insurmountable difficulty of recon- 
ciling the statement of God's strict oneness with the state- 
ment of his triplicity; or, that the three severally coequal 
beings — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy 
Ghost — incontestable- three parts — are contained in the 
"One only God" who is " without parts." 

It was therefore not a real but only a seeming solution 
of the difficulty; in fact, an evasion; yet such as might 
escape popular detection. ' ' God ' ' and ' ' godhead ' ' are not 



98 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

synonymous or convertible terms, as the chapter covertly 
intimates, because "God" is a masculine noun, implying 
individuality and uniqueness, whilst 1 1 godhead " is a neuter 
noun of multitude, capable of containing an unlimited 
plurality. When, therefore, the words "the" or " this 
godhead" were written down as if synonymous with the 
word "God," which had preceded, an artifice was practiced 
quite out of place in a solemn declaration purporting to 
teach millions the truth on the most sublime of all subjects, 
the being of the Supreme. The inconvertibility of the two 
words "God" and "godhead" may be further illustrated 
by putting the word "godhead" into the first definition, 
and the word "God" into the second. Both words will 
then be seen unsuitably placed, which would not be if they 
were equivalent and convertible. 

In a further description of the three persons of the Trinity, 
the Westminster Confession practically nullifies the deity 
of the Son and Holy Ghost, and also their co-equality with 
the Father. It says, ' ' the Father is of none, neither begotten 
nor proceeding ; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; 
the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and 
the Son." Now, it is characteristic of true deity that it is 
underived and self-existent. These points are fully ad- 
mitted by the Confession relative to the Father, but denied 
to the Son and Holy Ghost, for the Son is "begotten" and 
the Holy Ghost "proceeding." There is, however, a very 
great obscurity in describing the Son as ' ' eternally be- 
gotten," which may very well mean continuously "begot- 
ten," especially as we learn from scripture, and it is the 
general judgment and belief, that the Holy Ghost is con- 
tinuously "proceeding." The Father, then, is by the very 
showing of this Confession itself, the only underived, seli- 
existent God; the fountain of being; of whom the Son is 
"eternally" (whatever that might mean) begotten, and the 
Holy Ghost "eternally " proceeding; no self-derivation or 
self-existence in either. 

As an additional evidence of the unsound foundation of 
the Nicene and Calvinistic doctrine, it is not unworthy of 
note that the Westminster Confession rests its grand dogma 
of "God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost" 
on the once assumed scriptural — but now well known and 
universally acknowledged spurious — text, ist John, 5: 7, as 
read in the King James translation. So, as time goes on, 
falls or rots away prop after prop of the Nicene edifice. 

In a later chapter the Confession enjoins that "Religious 
worship is to be given to God the Father, Son and Holy 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 99 

Ghost, and to him alone," using the singular pronoun 
"him" as if the human mind, when it has three distinct 
objects placed before it, could regard the three as but a 
single object ' ' alone. ' ' Those who may happen to prefer 
giving ' ' true ' ' religious worship to ' ' Him alone ' ' to whom 
it is due, will do well to consult Christ's conversation with 
the woman of Samaria, as found in the 4th chapter of 
John's gospel. Compared with this the Westminster for- 
mulary exhibits a great deal of surplusage. * 

*The Presbyterian or Westminster Confession is as follows on the sub- 
jects of the Divine nature and of the generation of Christ : 

Chapter 2, section 3. 

' ' In the unity of the godhead there be three persons of one substance, 
power and eternity ; God the Father , God the Son and God the Holy 
Ghost. — 1st John, 5: 7 — {Spurious.) 

' ' The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding ; the Son is 
eternally begotten of the Father , the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding 
from the Father and the Son." 

Chapter 8, section 2. 

' ' The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and 
eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the 
fulness of time was come, take upon him man's nature with all the essen- 
tial properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin, being 
conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin 
Mary, of he-r substance. So that two whole, perfect and distinct natures, 
the godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one 
person, without conversion, composition or confusion ; which person is 
very God and very man, yet One Christ, the only mediator between God 
and man." 

Section 3. 

"The Lord Jesus, in his human nature thus united to the divine, was 
sanctified and anointed with the Holy Ghost above measure," &c, &c. 

On the subject of the generation of Christ the Presbyterian symbol is 
ungrammatically expressed, and is so entangled and intervolved as to re- 
quire considerable pains to unravel it. The Episcopal article, though not 
free from difficulty, is comparatively plain and intelligible. The Presby- 
terian declaration, when straightened out, states that the second per- 
son in the Trinity took upon him man's nature of or from the substance 
of the Virgin Mary, being, viz., which had been, conceived by the power of 
the Holy Ghost, because the symbol cannot mean, though it verbally says, 
that very and eternal God, the second person in the Trinity, of one sub- 
stance with the Father, was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. 
It is to be understood, then, that according to the Presbyterian Confession, 
the "One Christ" is the result of aft annexation of the second person of 
the Trinity to the human fruit of the conception hy the Holy Ghost ; that 
is to say, the human child Jesus, produced from the influence of the Holy 
Ghost upon Mary, received by annexation to its person (presumably at 
the instant of the aforesaid conception) the "whole, perfect, and distinct 
nature " of the second person in the Trinity. Annexation, it will be per- 
ceived, escapes "conversion, composition and confusion," and remains 
the only conceivable interpretation of the alleged "taking upon him" 
mentioned in section 2. Christ is, therefore, according to this symbol, a 
duplex being, part God and part man, both parts being "inseparably 
joined together." It must hence follow that there is a manifest difference 



IOO NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

It is not our purpose to make any extended review of 
so great an aggregation as the Westminster Confession, 
which — whilst interspersed with numerous points both true 
and good — looks mainly like a magisterial dictation of what 
every one on earth, and perhaps out of it, ought to believe 
about divine things, but, after a passing remark on a 
single sentence, to present the Presbyterian doctrine on the 
important subject of Baptism, and close with a rapid sketch 
of Calvin and Knox, the veritable rocks whence this system 
was hewn and the pits from which it was digged. 

The single sentence of the Confession referred to is that 
which declares that ' ' the sin of our first parents God was 
pleased to permit, having purposed to order it to His own 
glory," which teaches to the ordinary apprehension that 
God permitted sin, if he did not ordain it, because it 
furnished him an opportunity whereby better to enhance 
His own glory than Adam and Eve's sinlessness would 
have done. This, however, seems to involve the conse- 
quence that God's interest in man's sin was greater than 
in his righteousness, for which reason God permitted the 

between the Episcopal article and the Presbyterian dictum, for whilst the 
latter (therein agreeing with scripture) shows the Holy Ghost to have 
been the actual genitor of Jesus, the former ascribes his paternity to the 
God-the-Son, saying nothing at all in that connexion about the Holy 
Ghost or God the Father. Yet both churches claim to be orthodox. 

One or two notes and queries step in here. Note ist, that whilst both 
Episcopals and Presbyterians mention God-the-Son, the second person in 
the Trinity, as a principal part}' to the generation of Jesus, neither Matthew 
nor Iyuke, nor the Apostles' creed, in their accounts of Christ's origin, 
seem to know anything whatever about it. The earliest statement of 
the doctrine is in the Nicene creed, and to this our orthodox friends 
adhere in preference to the unvarnished testimony of the New Testament. 
Note 2d, that if at the instant of conception the " two whole, perfect and 
distinct natures " of the second person of the Trinity and of the human 
child Jesus "were inseparably joined together," "never to be divided," 
it must follow that they continued in the same "inseparable" state of 
junction during the virgin's whole gestatory period; and further, that 
she was delivered of the second person of the Trinity and of the human 
babe at the same time. Such must have been the result of the alleged 
" inseparable " junction. Note 3d. It is said in one of the gospels that 
Gabriel's visit "troubled" Marj- ; what might have been her trouble if 
Gabriel had told her that she should bring forth not only a human son, 
Jesus, but " very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the 
Father!" Gabriel spared her such astounding intelligence, not, most 
likely, out of any special kindness, but because, like Matthew, Luke, and 
the authors of trie Apostles' creed, he was himself quite uninformed upon 
the subject. Note 4. Protestant Episcopalians and Presbyterians have 
been known to reproach Roman Catholics for designating the Virgin 
Man- " Mother of God." Now, reflecting on their own articles and Con- 
fession, can it be said that they do not furnish the Catholics with a good 
excuse for so doing ? More than that, do they not furnish the Catholics 
with a justification? And no wonder, when, on a cardinal doctrine, both 
parties are inspired from the same source. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. IOI 

sin. Not only does this appear to reverse all our best 
ideas of the perfect rectitude and holiness of the Divine 
will and government, but to contradict the Apostles' doc- 
trine that by sinning men have not furthered, but "come 
short of the glory of God." Calvinistic doctrine is per- 
vaded with the notion that the interior compelling force of 
the Divine Mind is the desire to manifest forth the Divine 
power and glory, and in the pursuit of this end to be will- 
ing to overlook every other consideration and every other 
being in the universe. Instead of a righteous father ruling 
with a father's just authority Calvinism regards God as a 
stern and jealous monarch, ever intent simply on Himself. 
It seems to have missed appreciation of the Saviour's assur- 
ances of the Divine relation and the Divine love at the 
time he announced his own personal departure to Mary 
Magdalene at the sepulchre, and said, " Go to my brethren 
and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your 
Father, and to my God and your God." 

The Westminster Confession is Psedobaptist, and teaches 
that ' ' dipping the person is not necessary, but that 
baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling 
water on the person. ' ' Not wishing very much to antago- 
nize the Confession on this head in our own person, we 
will let John Milton mainly represent the views we hold, 
taking Milton to be at least equal, head and shoulders, to 
Calvin or Knox, or any of their associates. 

Under the gospel, the first of the two great sacraments, 
or sealings of the covenant of grace, whereby men testify 
their faith and obedience to God with a sincere heart and 
grateful remembrance, is Christian Baptism. The form 
of this sealing, or sacrament, is an immersion into water, 
(Milton preferred running water,) signifying their regenera- 
tion by the Holy Spirit and their union with Christ in his 
death, burial, and resurrection. The going down into the 
water represents death and descent into the grave ; the 
temporary concealment under the water represents burial, 
which is a temporary withdrawal from the world's ken; 
and the rising again out of the water represents resurrection. 
Thus the rite of baptism by immersion symbolizes the 
great distinguishing and central truth of the Christian 
religion which it was so hard to get the world in the days 
of Christ and the Apostles to believe, as we may note in 
Paul's plaintive interrogatory before Agrippa, "Why 
should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God 
should raise the dead?" The entire suitableness, there- 
fore, of baptism by immersion — for baptism by simple 



102 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

pouring or sprinkling is meaningless — must be evident to 
every mind, and all the rather when we recollect it was 
the form adopted by John the Baptist ; was accepted by 
Christ in his own case ; practiced by Christ's Apostles, and 
was prevalent throughout the Christian world in the early 
ages and centuries of Christian history, and as continued 
down thence is the only form in use at the present day in 
the Eastern or Greek church, and wherever, as in Russia, 
that church holds sway. 

Milton quotes Christ's command to baptize at the close 
of the gospels of Matthew and Mark, showing the indis- 
pensable necessity of baptism. " He that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be 
damned," and by the text, observing the order, first, belief, 
conviction, and conversion ; then corporal baptism, followed 
by a newness of life, even ' ' as Christ was raised from the 
dead by the glory of the Father." See also the first few 
verses of the sixth chapter of Paul to the Romans, and like- 
wise the twelfth verse of his second chapter to the Colos- 
sians. Baptism represents — as by dramatic rehearsal — the 
death and burial of the " old man," with the rising again, 
whereby he has become altogether new. 

Milton goes on to say that, in contemplation of baptism, 
rightly understood, i ' infants are not to be baptized, inas- 
much as they are incompetent to receive instruction as a 
believer, or to enter into a covenant, or to promise or answer 
for themselves, or even to hear the word. For how can 
infants, who understand not the word, be purified thereby, 
any more than adults can receive edification by hearing an 
unknown language ? For it is not that outward baptism 
which purifies only the filth of the flesh, that saves us, but 
4 ' the answer of a good conscience, ' ' as Peter testifies, of 
which infants are incapable. Besides, baptism is not merely 
a covenant, containing a certain stipulation on one side 
with a corresponding engagement on the other, which in 
the case of an infant is impossible, but it is also a vow — 
of the nature of an oath of allegiance — and as such can 
neither be pronounced by infants nor required of them. ' ' It 
is remarkable," says Milton, " to what futile arguments 
those divines have recourse who maintain the contrary 
opinion." They allege the text in Matthew 19: 14, "suffer 
little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom 
of heaven." It appears, however, that children were not 
brought to Christ to be baptized, but " that he might put 
his hands upon them and pray. And Christ laid his hands 
upon them and departed thence," with no mention of bap- 






XAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 103 

tism. Mark says Christ blessed the children, which he no 
donbt did. From which Milton concludes : ' ' Let the church 
therefore receive infants which come unto her, after the 
example of Christ, with imposition of hands and benedic- 
tion, but not with baptism." As to Christ's saying "of 
such are the kingdom of heaven," he had respect to their 
simplicity and innocence, which cannot be said of infants 
who have not as yet the faculty of reason. 

As touching Acts, 2 : 39, whence Psedobaptists argue that 
the ' ' promise is to children as well as to others, ' ' if they 
will only read two verses further on they will find it written 
" they that gladly received the Apostle's word were bap- 
tized, ' ' showing that understanding and will were neces- 
sary qualifications for baptism, neither of which is possessed 
by infants. In respect to the supposed parallel between 
Jewish circumcision and Christian baptism, no such analogy 
exists, for females do not have part in the first, while bap- 
tism is for all people and nations without distinction in the 
second, for the remission of sins and sanctification, a sign 
of our death and resurrection with Christ. For baptism 
there must be previous knowledge and faith; of which 
infants and young children are incapable. 

Infants were not fit for the baptism of John, who required 
repentance and confession of sin ; still less fit are they for 
the baptism of Christ, which demands knowledge, repent- 
ance and faith. 

Referring to the appropriateness of immersion, Milton 
continues : "It is in vain alleged b5 r those who, on the 
authority of Mark, 7:4, and Luke, 11:38, (where the prac- 
tice of frequent washings of cups and of the hands by the 
Jews is alluded to,) have introduced the practice of affusion, 
or sprinkling, instead of immersion, that to dip and sprinkle 
mean the same thing, since in washing we do not sprinkle 
the hands, but immerse them. ' ' 

With respect to what is often called the "baptismal 
formula," in Matt, 28: 19, "go ye therefore and teach all 
nations, baptizing them into (not in) the name of the Father 
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," Milton rightly 
alludes to the total omission in the New Testament of all 
record that the Apostles ever used this so-called formula, 
the circumstance of which omission makes it far from 
improbable that the baptism indicated by Christ in this 
text was not the bodily baptism in water — which would 
follow in due order and sequence — but the preliminary 
spiritual baptism or indoctrination into the mind and heart 
of the convert, well defined by a baptism into the name 



104 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

(that is, the knowledge) of the Father, Son, and Spirit, 
which will comprise the whole Gospel. A baptism into a 
name or names is surely not the same thing as a baptism 
in water, nor can a mere immersion of the body in water 
be a substitute for it, though the latter may well symbolize 
the reception of it, and be a public testimony thereto. 

The indication that the supposed formula in Matt., 28: 
19, was not intended by Christ as an indispensable feature 
in the ceremony of water-baptism, has this to prove it, viz., 
that nothing of the kind anywhere else appears, unless it 
is to be understood that the mention of "the Son" in 
the text would naturally suggest that water-baptism had 
special reference to him, and to him only, because he only 
died and rose again, which the Father and the Holy Ghost 
assuredly did not. Baptism into their name must, there- 
fore, be a totally different thing from the baptism into 
Christ as understood and practiced by the Apostles. Paul 
indignantly inquires of the Corinthians if " Paul was 
crucified for them? or were they baptized into the name 
of Paul" ? He does not ask if they were baptized into the 
Father and the Holy Ghost. From all which it may be 
concluded that the baptism alluded to in Matt., 28: 19, was 
an indoctrination into the gospel in its every branch, each 
respectively presided over by Father, Son and Holy Ghost, 
so that to mention those names separately was to comprise 
in an impressive manner the whole body of divine truth — 
the whole gospel. This conclusion is borne out by the 
parallel texts in Mark, 16: 15 and 16, and Luke, 24: 47. 
It cannot be doubted that if Matt. 28: 19 was intended 
to be as now commonly supposed, the other three gospels 
would have similarly enforced that meaning, whereas not 
one of them nor the whole book of the Acts, with its 
numerous instances of baptisms, has a syllable or hint that 
way, but altogether in the direction we have indicated. 

Since baptism symbolizes "buried into death" and 
"being planted together in the likeness of Christ's death," 
and the baptized Christian is regarded as "dead, and his 
life hid with Christ in God," it inevitably follows that 
baptism cannot be effected by any representative ceremonial 
which does not carry the subject of it temporarily out of 
sight. This excludes affusion and sprinkling, which are 
performed with the subject in full sight during the whole 
of the ceremony. 

Voluminous have been the discussions touching the 
scriptural meaning of the word "baptize," originally 
Greek. We will simply state what seems to be indispu- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 105 

table, that it is a compound word, consisting of the two 
parts "bapt" and "ize," whereof the former means dip 
or immerse, the latter thoroughly or with effect. The 
whole, therefore, to dip thoroughly ; that is, out of sight. 

Lastly, if, in the judgment of Christ and his Apostles, 
pouring or sprinkling was as good as full baptizing, why 
did they subject their converts to the more difficult and 
unpleasant ceremonial when the simple and easy one would 
answer just as well? It is hard to think from their known 
benevolence they would do anything of the kind. 

Of the general purport of Christian baptism, though it 
may seem tautological, let us briefly remark that it indi- 
cates an entrance into the Church of Christ, which is the 
kingdom of God. The baptism hy water signifies the sub- 
ject's spiritual disconnection with this world and his coas- 
cension with Christ : the baptism into the Spirit cements 
the believer's union with the pervading power of the world 
to come. How palpable, then, the verity of Christ's words, 
' ' Ye must be born from above. ' ' 

When Peter, on the da)- of Pentecost, preached that open- 
ing address of the Apostolic band, and 3,000 far from tract- 
able Jewish people were converted, Peter prefixed the 
indispensable prerequisite of repentance to the rite of 
baptism, to which succeeded the gift of the Holy Ghost. 
So when Peter and John found that the converts in Samaria 
had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus, 
they petitioned that the complemental blessing of the Holy 
Spirit might be granted them also. It was granted, for it 
had been probably kept back that the gift might authen- 
ticate those, two Apostles to the Samaritan people. Such 
are the wisdom and goodness of God and of His Son. 
Again, at Cesarea in the house of the Centurion Cornelius, 
baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost were imparted ; 
though in this case the order was changed, the gift came 
oefore the baptism, very likely to provide that Peter should 
be admonished that God's purpose was to confer on Gentiles 
as well as Jews, repentance unto life. The circumstances 
•of the baptism of Cornelius and his household forcibly 
teach the indispensableness of the act of outward baptism. 
Though the Holy Ghost had been imparted, the necessity 
for baptism had not been superseded, because visible bap- 
tism signalizes visible entrance into the church or body of 
Christ, which is the kingdom of God. One more instance 
will suffice to show that baptism is the prescribed method 
of entrance into the Christian church. When the twelve 
disciples at Ephesus, who had been baptized only by John's 



106 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

baptism and did not know whether there were any Holy 
Ghost, were more thoroughly instructed, Paul counselled 
their baptism into the name of the Lord Jesus. This being- 
accomplished, the Holy Ghost was communicated to the 
whole party, with miraculous gifts superadded. It may 
not be inopportune to remark at this point, that if the 
modernly supposed ' ' baptismal formula ' ' is indispensably 
necessary to the right celebration of Christian baptism, then 
the Apostle Paul, on this occasion alone, caused twelve 
baptisms to be wrongly conducted, to say nothing of the 
multitude of cases elsewhere of the same erroneous char- 
acter. The Protestant Episcopal Church would not admit 
to its communion such as these twelve Ephesian converts, 
because the aforesaid ' ' formula, ' ' which that church re- 
gards as the "essential part of baptism," was not complied 
with when they were only "baptized into the name of the 
Lord Jesus." The Presbyterian Church coincides with the 
Episcopal in its views concerning baptism, except only as 
to sponsors, and translates Matt. 28 : 19 with the same 
misleading inaccuracy. It would also refuse communion 
with persons baptized as were those twelve Ephesian con- 
verts, and for the same reason — that baptism merely into 
the name of the Lord Jesus is informal and insufficient. 
No candid Episcopalian or Presbyterian will deny that 
the motive behind the exclusive devotion shown by their 
churches to the mistranslated text in Matt. 28 : 19 and their 
consequent disparagement of the apostolic practice, is the 
support presumed to be furnished by the said text to the 
Athanasian Trinity. But that support is the slenderest 
imaginable. 

John, the second sou of Gerard Cauvin, or Calvin, was 
born in July, 1509, at the diocesan city of Xoyon, in the 
north of France. Gerard was secretary to the bishop, 
notary apostolic and procurator fiscal, a man of ability and 
in excellent repute. His wish was to give his children the 
best attainable education, and circumstances being favora- 
ble, his son John profited thereby to an uncommon degree. 
He was educated partly at Xoyon under his father's strict 
eye and jealous care, with a view to entering the Catholic 
Church, and at the early age of twelve was made chaplain. 
Thus early in life he exhibited many of the traits that 
marked his career throughout; laborious, faithful to his 
duties, silent and grave in demeanor, he took no part in 
the sports and diversions of his fellow-students, but often 
severely censured what he deemed to be their shortcomings 
"with a measure, even," savs one of his admirers, "of 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 107 

acrimony." Indeed, it is said, that his companions fixed, 
upon him the epithet or nickname of ' ' accusative. ' ' Soon 
after his induction to the chaplaincy of La Gesine he re- 
ceived the tonsure at the hands of Bishop Hangest, which 
made him capable of becoming a priest. In 1523 the plague 
struck Noyon, and many of its people were cut off. Calvin's 
father was much exercised for the safety of his son, and 
procured for him permission to remove temporarily to Paris 
without the loss of his incomes. He went there in com- 
pany of some youths of the noble Mommor family, with 
whom he had been long associated, and took up his studies 
in the college of La Marche under the charge of Maturin 
Cordier, famous for his scholarship and skill in teaching. 
Calvin's progress in his studies was rapid, and the profi- 
ciency he attained in the knowledge and use of the Latin 
language remarkable. At this time the Roman priesthood 
and the bigoted Francis 1st, King of France, caused Prot- 
estant blood to flow in streams. Calvin fell in with one 
Olivetan, who had translated the Bible into French, which 
Calvin read, and his faith in the popular Catholic religion 
became so much shaken that he rejoiced in never having: 
become a Catholic priest. His father, being dissatisfied 
that one so competent as John was making so little money, 
advised him to abandon the church and take up the civil 
law, which, agreeing with Calvin's own feelings at the 
time, he left Paris and went to Orleans, commencing there 
the study of the law, and with such devotion that his health 
suffered. He then went to the city of Bourges, finding- 
there Melchior Volmar, a German Lutheran, from whom. 
he learnt Greek and the reformed religion. When at 
Bourges he was advised of his father's death, which took 
him back to Noyon, where he remained till the year 1532. 
Abandoning now the study of law he resumed theology, 
but according to the principles of the new faith. Persecu- 
tion for religion's sake was terribly rife, and the king's 
heart obdurate, which Calvin hoped to soften by publish- 
ing an edition of Seneca's treatise on Clemency, with a 
commentary, which he dedicated to his friend, the Abbot 
Claude Mommor. No such good effect followed, but a 
heavy expense devolved on Calvin, which he honestly 
discharged by the sacrifice of a part of the property he 
had received from his father. About this time, say 1533, 
Calvin was an advocate for making the pure Bible the basis 
of church doctrine. Nicholas Cop, regent of the Sorbonne, 
delivered before that college an address which had been 
written for him by Calvin; but it was so full of the reformed 



108 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

ideas, and particularly of the doctrine of justification by 
faith, that it produced an explosion in the college, and 
Cop had to flee from Paris. He betook himself to Basil, in 
Switzerland, a retreat for refugees from Romish persecution. 
Calvin was compelled to take care of himself by conceal- 
ment, and, flitting from place to place, found temporary 
safety at Nerac, where Margaret, queen of Navarre, a sister 
of the king, though of the new faith, had her court. Thence 
Calvin returned to Noyon and to Paris, where he had to 
keep retired. About this time Michael Servetus, a Spanish 
physician, and a decided reformer, crossed Calvin's path. 
Servetus went further than Calvin, in that he, resting on the 
Bible pure and simple, denied the doctrine of the Trinity, 
and a day for debate on the subject was agreed upon between 
them, though Servetus did not appear at the appointed time, 
either from fear of his opponent's arguments or the minions 
of Rome. At this period, too, Calvin encountered some 
Anabaptists, with whom he contended about their belief 
that the soul continues dormant between the period of death 
and resurrection. He wrote a book to refute this view. On 
leaving Paris he went to Angouleme and taught Greek. His 
next travel was once more to the city of Orleans, and thence 
to Poictiers, where he preached and organized a ministry. 
But he was compelled to flee from France, and he bent his 
steps towards Basil, the house of refuge. One of his ser- 
vants cruelly robbed him on the way, so that he had to 
borrow some money wherewith to get to Strasburgh. At 
length he arrived in Basil, and was welcomed by the 
numerous refugees gathered there. Here he went on with 
his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which he had 
already commenced. He wrote the dedication to Francis the 
First in such choice Latin as almost to constitute the won- 
der of the age. To some editions is prefixed the device of a 
flaming sword, with a motto in Latin, signifying " I came 
not to send peace, but a sword. ' ' His next movement was 
to Italy, on a visit to Renee de France, Duchess of Ferrara, 
who, like Queen Margaret, entertained the reformed ideas. 
Calvin now designed seeking a place of permanent residence 
at Basil, and set out for that city; but finding the usual route 
obstructed, was obliged to take Geneva by the way. Here, 
casually meeting with the two French refugees, William 
Farel and John Viret, he was prevailed on to remain, and 
was forthwith elected by the magistrates and people pro- 
fessor of theology and preacher. His age at this time was 
about twenty-seven. One of the first acts of Calvin and 
Farel was to draw up a system of reformed religious doc- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 109 

trine whereby the distracted notions of the people might 
be brought into a reasonable uniformity. To this the people- 
were required to swear fealty. Calvin also prepared a cate- 
chism for children at school. He complained of certain 
irregularities, and declared his refusal to celebrate the Lord' s 
Supper till they were removed. He also refused to submit 
to some regulations lately adopted by the canton of Berne, 
which included the use of unleavened bread at the Lord's. 
Supper; that the baptismal fonts, which had been removed 
from the churches, should be restored, and the old customary 
feasts be reintroduced. This brought on a conflict, the- 
result of which was that a vote was taken, and Calvin and 
Farel were ordered out of Geneva within two days. They 
submitted. Calvin went to Berne and Zurich, and then to 
Strasburgh, where he was allowed to start a church on his own- 
model. He married in Strasburgh one Idelette Van Buren, 
a widow, and remained there till 1541, keeping up a corre- 
spondence with his friends at Geneva, where disorder 
reigned and efforts were on foot to restore the papal power. 
All this only tended to open the way to Calvin's return to 
Geneva, whither his friends invited him and whereat he 
arrived in September, 1541, the decree of banishment 
having been 'duly revoked. He soon became master of the 
situation, and found himself immersed in a multitude of 
duties and services of various kinds. He had for antag- 
onists, political and otherwise, ' two men, Pighius and 
Jerome Bolsec, the latter of whom was originally a Carmel- 
ite friar at Paris, but becoming attached to the reformed, 
doctrines went to Ferrara, and there probably met with 
Calvin. He assumed the profession of a physician and 
made his way to Geneva, but in 1551 he allowed his disap- 
proval of Calvin's doctrine of absolute decrees so to affect 
him, that one day after the close of public worship, but 
while the congregation was still full, he lifted up his voice 
and denounced said doctrine in a loud and indecorous 
manner. For this he was imprisoned, and finally banished. 
"He then," says Mosheim, "returned to the place of his 
nativity and to the communion of Rome, and published 
the most bitter and scandalous libels, in which the reputa- 
tion, conduct, and morals of Calvin and Beza were cruelly 
attacked. ' ' 

Another of the somewhat numerous persons with whom 
Calvin fell into conflict was Sebastian Castalio, about six 
years younger than Calvin and a native of France. He- 
met Calvin at Strasburgh in 1540, and subsequently went 
to Geneva, where, by reason of his extensive learning and. 



IIO NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

fine taste, he became master of the public school, which 
position he might have retained indefinitely but for Calvin's 
vengeful spirit and unbounded worship of his own dogmas. 
As it was, Castalio was head of the Genevan school only- 
three years. It so happened that Castalio could not approve 
■of punishing what Calvin and company were pleased to call 
heresy by inflictions as if for crimes; neither could he bow 
down to their notions about predestination ; he did not 
also share Calvin's ideas about the Song of Solomon ; 
thought what seemed to him right concerning Christ's 
descent into hell, and was supposed to hold some views in 
common with the Anabaptists. Therefore Calvin and 
Beza persecuted him, and drove him with his large family 
to look for a living elsewhere than in Geneva. He went 
to Basil and taught Greek in the university, but his circum- 
stances were so narrow as on one occasion to suggest to 
him to catch some driftwood that was running during a 
freshet in the river Rhine. Calvin, however, charged him 
with stealing the wood; to which Castalio firmly but 
meekly replied, claiming the right to catch for himself 
what belonged to nobody in particular, and appealing to 
the people of Basil in defense of his moral character. It 
is evident from what is recorded that Calvin and Beza 
essayed some efforts to get their victim driven from Basil, 
but he was too good and learned a man for the people to 
treat in that way. He translated the Bible into Latin and 
French, and wrote other works, dying in poverty at the 
age of forty-eight. 

The historian Mosheim gives other instances of Calvin's 
indulgence in tyranny and personal hate, to wit, Calvin's 
" intimate friend and patron, Jaques de Bourgogne, a man 
illustrious by his descent from the dukes of Burgundy, who 
had settled at Geneva with no other view than to enjoy the 
pleasure of conversing with him." This gentleman had 
employed Jerome Bolsecas his physician, and was li so well 
satisfied with his services that he endeavored to support 
him and to prevent his being ruined by the enmity and 
authority of Calvin. This incensed Calvin to such a degree 
that he turned the force of his resentment against this 
illustrious uobleman, who, to avoid his vengeance, removed 
from Geneva and passed the remainder of his days in a 
rural retreat. 1 ' 

Another instance was George Blandrata, an Italian physi- 
cian and divine, who after practicing medicine in Poland 
and Transylvania, returned to Italy, but was compelled by 
the Inquisition there to fly. He went to Geneva, calling 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. Ill 

himself a Catholic, but as Calvin suspected he was an 
Arian, Blandrata had to flee Geneva likewise. He became 
physician to Sigismund and Stephen, emperors of Poland. 

Bernardino Ochino, an Italian, was also made to feel the 
bigotry and intolerance of the same parties. He had been 
a general in the order of Capuchins, but after his conver- 
sion became pastor of a reformed church at Zurich ; yet 
not sufficiently curbing his intellectual forces so as to suit 
the scale of opinion established by Calvin, he had to betake 
himself to Poland. Theodore Beza is supposed to have 
done himself no credit in pretending to justify the treat- 
ment visited upon Ochino. 

Some estimate might be formed of the style of govern- 
ment set on foot in Geneva by Calvin after his final return 
thither. It could inflict all kinds of censures and punish- 
ments as far as excommunication. Many disliked this as 
endangering a return to papal tyranny, but Calvin main- 
tained his ground and upheld the Consistory, of which he 
was perpetual president. He was also president of the 
Assembly of the clergy. He would never allow any change 
or modification of his system, which looked to making 
Geneva to the Protestant world what Rome was and is to 
the Papal. As a sample of the interference of his laws 
and regulations with the social and personal rights and 
liberty of the citizen, we have an account amusing enough 
to react about when applied to others, but which must 
have been vexatiously bitter to actual experience. A bride 
on her way to church was arrested for having her hair too 
much decorated, and was kept under arrest for three days. 
Two ladies who attended her shared the same fate, as did 
the serving woman that bedecked the offending head. 
This was done by the power of the Consistory under the 
influence of Calvin's church. 

But of the enormities whose number was doubtless legion, 
there is one which stands forth never to be forgotten — the 
cold-blooded destruction at Calvin's instance of the honest 
but indiscreet Servetus, of about the same age as himself, 
and whom he had met many years before. Servetus had 
been wandering about Europe, a firm believer, if sometimes 
an injudicious proclaimer, of the unity of God in one per- 
son, and was on his way to Zurich by the route of Geneva. 
He arrived at the last-named city in the middle of July, 
I 553) a refugee from Papal persecution on account of his 
creed. He remained in Geneva almost a month and was 
to leave for Zurich on the 14th of August. The day before 
his intended departure he went to church, where the keen 



112 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

vision of Calvin descried him. More than seven years 
before this, viz., on the 13th February, 1546, Calvin had 
written to Farel telling him that in case of the entrance of 
Servetus into Geneva, "I shall never permit him to de- 
. part alive if my authority be great enough." Servetus 
had written a book designed to disprove the doctrine of 
the Trinity. He had also verbally uttered the same senti- 
ments. At Calvin's instance Servetus was arrested (for 
no present crime, legal, social, moral, or ecclesiastical, in 
Geneva) on a charge of heresy and blasphemy, Calvin ap- 
pearing as accuser, reminding us of the sobriquet "accusa- 
tive" which his fellow students had put upon him in his 
younger days. It was said, too, that at some time and 
somewhere, Servetus had put grit between Calvin's teeth 
by making the declaration " that neither the Bible nor the 
Ante-Nicene fathers knew anything of the Trinity, and 
that the doctrine stands as the great obstacle to keep Jews 
and Mohammedans from becoming Christians." 

After a protracted trial, in which accuser and accused 
displayed much dialectic skill, Servetus was condemned 
and sentenced to die by burning at the stake, which was 
carried into effect without delay on the 27th October, 
1553. Farel was Calvin's tool to superintend the execuv 
tion, and stolidly expressed surprise that Servetus did not 
enter upon a discussion and defense of his doctrine while 
the flames were wrapping themselves around him ! Serve- 
tus cried out again and again, "Mercy," "Mercy." His 
cry was not, however, to the marble hearts around him, 
but to the Saviour above him, for he said, "Jesus, thou 
Son of God, have mercy on me. ' ' We know from Calvin's 
own expressed purpose to Farel, written more than seven 
years and a half before, that he kept the homicidal intent 
in his heart all that time at least. How many prayers did 
he offer up within that interval ; how many homilies ; how 
many sermons did he preach ; how many sinners did he 
exhort with the spirit, not of Christ, but of one far nearer 
the beginning of human history and with a name not 
much unlike his own — lying undetected in his heart? 

Servetus left behind him in Geneva some fellow-believers, 
who were banished, a punishment that might have been 
ample enough for Servetus himself, but which would have 
been still unnecessary had the vengeance of Calvin been 
able to keep quiet perhaps less than twenty-four hours. 

Of such things was John Calvin capable in his older 
and, what ought to have been, his better days. John 
Calvin, once the advocate for making the Bible, and the 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 113 

Bible only, the ground-work of the faith of the church ; 
John Calvin, the fugitive from popish persecution and 
cruelty ; hiding, flying, changing his name, and expending 
his noble powers in the vain endeavor to bring the blood- 
thirsty bigot, King Francis, to clemency. A writer in 
Dr. Philip SchafF's Encyclopsedia tells us that Calvin's 
conversion, when he was about twenty-two or twenty-three 
years of age, was like the Apostle Paul's, "radical and 
permanent. ' ' There was probably no very great difference 
between the age of Paul and of Calvin when they were 
converted, taking the Encyclopaedia at its word. Calvin 
was in his forty-fifth year when he caused the burning of 
Servetus, and had been ' ' converted ' ' more than twenty 
years. What was Paul's condition of soul at more than 
twenty years after his conversion ? Could he have per- 
mitted himself to waylay, arrest in a church, and cause to 
be horribly murdered, a man who had committed no crime, 
and who was on the point of quietly leaving the vicinity 
of which he was not a citizen, and but a transient visitor ? 
Sectarian bigotry must have overturned the judgment 
before the conclusion was arrived at that the latter half of 
Calvin's life furnished any really satisfactory proof that 
Calvin was ever converted at all ; or, at any rate, that he 
was fit to go into the same scales with the merciful, mag- 
nanimous, and Christ-like Paul. 

There was a time in Paul's life when he and Calvin bore 
spiritually a close resemblance, but that was before Paul's 
mission to Damascus. Paul's life and character improved 
with his age ; for anything that appears, Calvin's grew 
worse and worse. Some are eager to mitigate Calvin's 
inhumanity by remarking that bitter prejudice and intol- 
erance were the faults of the age in which he lived, but 
they were not more prevalent and powerful than in the 
days of Paul. A great professor and paragon of Christian 
excellence ; a mighty theologue and master of all divine 
wisdom and knowledge ; the author of the famous Insti- 
tutes, ought to have more benefitted by his own doctrine 
than to exhibit such a practice as his. Besides which, 
could he learn nothing from the cruelty of the king ; noth- 
ing from his own writings in aid of Seneca's appeal for 
clemency ; nothing from his own sufferings and the mis- 
eries of others, of which he must have known so much ? 
Was all as nothing before the seductions of place and 
power? Suppose the plea of extenuation is put in that 
Farel, and Beza, and Bullinger, and the mild Melancthon, 
and no matter how many more, gave their countenance to 



114 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Calvin's transgression, what does that show but that their 
reformation was no more than a halfway affair, needing a 
better and higher advance than anything to which they 
had attained. Calvin had, in his day, been vouchsafed 
heart-cravings for a full return upon the pure and simple 
truths of the Bible, but he permitted them to fade out and 
vanish away. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is quoted as say- 
ing that the cruel burning of Servetus was not " Calvin's 
guilt especially, but the common opprobrium of all Euro- 
pean Christendom;" of which the real meaning is that 
Christendom, including Calvin, was little more Christian 
than in name, and that the Reformation and reformers 
were not by any means so perfect as they took themselves 
to be. Blessed be the God of all grace that He has in this 
western land, free from the dust and cobwebs that begrimed 
the churches of the old world, given the first complete 
opportunity for the free seeding, cultivation, and harvest 
of His heavenly truth, which furnishes a better safeguard 
for liberty and prosperity of soul and body than all the 
forces, treasuries, and hierarchies on the face of the earth. 

This sketch of the life and deeds of John Calvin termi- 
nates with recording that on his death-bed he admonished 
Beza and his other friends and co-workers against repeat- 
ing the combination, in any one individual, of the chief 
civil and ecclesiastical authority of the little Genevan 
Republic. He breathed his last on the 27th May, 1564. 

The other great Presbyterian and Calvinistic champion 
was John Knox, born at Haddington, in East Lothian, in the 
kingdom of Scotland, in 1505. His education commenced 
in his native town and was completed at the University of 
Glasgow. He took orders about 1530 and continued in the 
Catholic church as secular priest and apostolic notary till 
1543. The reformed religion had by this time consider- 
ably extended itself in Scotland and attracted Knox's atten- 
tion. He formed an acquaintance with George Wishart, a 
fervent preacher of the doctrine of justification by faith. 
The treacherous inveiglement of Wishart into the hands of 
the Catholic cardinal primate Beaton, followed by Beaton's 
trial, conviction and execution of Wishart for heresy by 
burning at the stake, fixed Knox's sentiments in favor of 
the Reformation. These sentiments becoming gen e rail v 
and rather dangerously known, Knox conceived the design 
of visiting Germany, but was prevailed upon by two gen- 
tlemen, who had placed their sons under Knox's tuition, to 
retire for protection into the castle of St. Andrews, which 
had been wrested from Catholic possession by less than a 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 115 

score of reformers who, by the thrust of a sword in the 
hand of James Melville, reciprocated on Beaton's person 
the violent death of Wish art. Knox was now advised to 
become a preacher, and with diffidence complied, commenc- 
ing to preach in 1547. He vehemently assailed popery 
and made many converts. A party of Catholics, mixed 
Scotch and French, assisted by French ships in the harbor, 
attacked and gained possession of the castle of St. An- 
drews, and Knox, with a number of the Protestant garri- 
son was, by the terms of the capitulation, transported to 
France. He was sent to the galleys and suffered much 
rough usage for about a year and a half, when by the prob- 
able interposition of the young English king, Edward the 
Sixth, he was restored to liberty and went to England. 
There he met Archbishop Cranmer, through whom he got 
a licence to preach, and occupied pulpits at Berwick on 
Tweed, Newcastle on Tyne, London, and some places in 
the south of England. On the accession of "Bloody" 
Mary to the English throne, Knox left Britain for the con- 
tinent, and going to Frankfort-on-the-Main preached there 
to a band of British refugees. Differences having broken 
out amongst them as to some church ceremonials, Knox 
went to Geneva, and, of course, made Calvin's personal 
acquaintance. But an invitation to return to Scotland 
having been extended to him, he accepted and arrived 
back in 1557. Then he married. He next went to Geneva 
with his family. He preached in Geneva till 1559 to the 
English congregation. He wrote a book entitled "The 
first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment 
of women, ' ' which brought down upon him the resentment 
of two queens, Elizabeth of England and Mary of Scots. 
From Geneva he returned to Scotland, in 1559, arriving at 
Leith the 2d May. Knox was proclaimed an outlaw and 
a rebel, but continued firm, preaching at Dundee and Perth, 
where a great riot took place, which ended in the destruc- 
tion of much Catholic Church paraphernalia and the laying 
the houses of the grey and black friars in ruins. He 
travelled thence to St. Andrews, where he preached four 
days, with the result of changing Romish to Protestant 
worship, and after that made a circuit over a large part 
of Scotland, continually preaching. On the 7th July he 
w-as elected minister of Edinburgh. Queen Mary arrived 
in Scotland from France in August, 1561, and sent for 
Knox, who is said by some to have behaved discourteously 
towards her, but which by others is denied. He was tried 
for treason and acquitted. A controversy was started be- 



Il6 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

tween him and a Catholic abbot, named Ouinton Kennedy, 
forty persons being appointed on each side as judges. Each 
side claimed the victory. Having been some time a widower, 
he married a second wife in 1564. He preached before 
Darnley, the Queen's husband, and offended him. In Octo- 
ber, 1570, Knox was stricken with a fit of apoplexy, and 
left Edinburgh for St. Andrews, remaining there fifteen 
months. News having arrived of the horrible massacre in 
Paris on St. Bartholomew's day and for six days after, viz., 
from August 24th to 31st, 1572, Knox preached a sermon 
denouncing the French king, Charles the Ninth, as " a 
cruel murderer and false traitor. ' ' The same year, on the 
24th November, John Knox bade adieu to all earthly things, 
dying in the presence of his wife, family, and friends. At 
his funeral the Earl of Morton said, " Here lieth a man who 
in his life never feared the face of man ; who hath been often 
threatened with dagge and dagger, but yet hath ended his 
days in peace and honor. ' ' Knox left two sons and three 
daughters, and the reputation of an exemplary private life. 
His maxims of conduct were regarded as too severe, and 
his manners sometimes too stern and harsh, which strongly 
suggests his archetype John Calvin, for him he followed in 
every important particular, as hath the Presbyterian Church 
of Scotland likewise, in doctrine, rites, and form of eccle- 
siastical government. When a writer in Dr. Schaff 's En- 
cyclopaedia asserts that ' ' Calvin based his system (of doc- 
trine) upon the Apostles' Creed, and followed its lines," 
plain truth demands the comment that, if he did, it was 
only as the Council of Nice based their system on the same 
model, using it as simply a skeleton to be fitted in with 
matter conflicting with and even contradictory to it. The 
axioms and principles out of which Calvin and his disciple 
Knox wove the texture of their system are declared to have 
been that "the authority of the church is supreme " ; "the 
church is our mother"; "outside the church there is no 
salvation" ; "her ministry is divinely constituted, and to 
it believers are bound to pay deference " ; " her authority 
is absolute in matters of doctrine, but when civil cases arise 
she hands the offenders over to the state for punishment." 
Calvin "aimed at theocracy," wherefore he naturally fell 
into the same lines of thought and resorted to the same 
modes of expression as the Romish doctors and dogmas he 
so much denounced, the difference being that with them 
the sacred church was Papal, with him Presbyterian, accord- 
ing with the judgment of the poet that " old Presbyter is 
but Pope writ large." One can hardly mistake the source 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. II J 

of those Blue Laws of some of our Eastern States, as well 
as of other bluish notions supposed to be domiciled there. 

In the way to ascertain the existing doctrines of the 
Lutheran Church it will not be necessary to do more than 
indicate the principal causes that led to the Lutheran 
Reformation. 

In the popedom of Julius the Second and on the 18th 
April, 1506, was commenced the great cathedral church of 
St. Peter's at Rome, with Bramante d'Urbino for architect. 
To Julius succeeded John de Medicis as Leo the Tenth, a 
man of bright parts and a promoter of learning, though of no 
special devotion to holiness, albeit an archbishop at eleven 
years of age. Leo surrounded himself with a brilliant but 
luxurious and expensive court. Under color of requiring 
large funds to prosecute the building of St. Peter's and to 
unite Christendom against the Turks, he was induced to 
institute markets for the sale of indulgences in Switzerland 
and Germany, which indulgences were declared to have 
the effect not only of a remission of temporal pains and 
penalties annexed by the church to certain transgressions, 
but of the punishments reserved in a future state to sin and 
impenitence. Thus the spiritual concerns of the present 
and future worlds were assumed to be under the dominion 
of the pope. Reasonably enough, these indulgences had 
a tendency the very contrary of the promotion of virtue and 
holiness. In order to quiet the natural remonstrances of 
the intellects and consciences of mankind, the doctrine was 
promulgated that there actually existed an immense treas- 
ure of merit, composed of the pious deeds and virtuous 
actions which the saints had performed beyond what was 
necessary for their own salvation, called Works of Super- 
erogation, additional to the infinite merits of Christ. That 
this excess of merit (which they looked at as an affair of 
avoirdupois, like any other market commodity) was appli- 
cable to the deficiencies of others, and was placed within 
the control and dispensing power of the pope, so that he 
could assign to such as he saw fit portions of this inex- 
haustible merit suitable to their respective degrees of guilt, 
and sufficient to deliver them from the present and future 
penalties due to their sins. 

To manage the matter of the sale of these commodities it 
was requisite to have an agent on the spot. For this, in 
Germany, Albert, the young archbishop of Mentz and Mag- 
deburg, offered himself and was accepted. As with Leo 
himself, Albert was not well in funds, so it was agreed that 
the profits of the traffic should be equally divided between 



Il8 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

the pope and the archbishop. But a sub-agent was also 
wanted to execute the actual sales, and for this one John 
Diezel or Tetzel, a Dominican monk, was chosen. He had 
an approved experience in this kind of business. 

Just at this time, A. D. 1516, there was at the University 
of Wittemberg, in the county of Mansfeld, in Lower Saxony, 
a young monk of the Augustine order, Martin Luther by 
name. He was professor of theology in the university. 
A number of people one day applied to him to hear their 
confessions. Their transgressions and sins had been bad 
enough, but after confession they refused to abandon their 
sins and commence reformation. Why so strange a refusal ? 
They informed Luther that they had bought indulgences 
which would protect them from punishment, do what they 
would. But Luther would not absolve them, and held 
their indulgences worthless. The disappointed people 
reported this to Tetzel, whereupon a conflict broke forth 
between him and Luther. Tetzel loudly denounced all 
that should question the validity of the indulgences, and 
even threatened to burn them as heretics. Luther, on the 
other hand, taught that true repentance, a change of heart, 
a willingness to bear the cross, and a doing of good works 
was the true way to Divine absolution, the only absolution 
of any value. To explain and enforce his views Luther 
drew up ninety -five reasons, or " theses " as he called them, 
and fixed them against the church door at Wittemberg. 
He also wrote to his archbishop, Albert, humbly asking 
that prelate to withdraw a book he had written to help 
forward the sale of the indulgences. But neither Albert 
nor any of the great clergy sided with Luther, who there- 
upon went to Rome. 

Every passing day's experience and observation tended 
to confirm Luther in the opinions and course he was pur- 
suing, so that standing upon the firm ground of scripture, 
and steadily relying upon the Divine protection, he went 
bravely but meekly forward, until indulgences, the pope, 
and doctrines of Rome lost their hold over the judgments 
and consciences of an important section of the Christian 
world. The conquering principle in Luther's hand was the 
substitution of a Divine free gift for a remission purchased 
from man; it was a mighty step in the right direction, yet 
it rested considerably short of where it should have reached. 

The present principal doctrines of the Lutheran Church 
appear to be, 1st, the Athanasian Trinity, with the adoption 
of the first four ecumenical councils and their doctrines ; 
2d, justification of the sinner before God by faith and not 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. II9 

by works; 3d, infant baptism; and 4th, consubstantiation. 
Now, what is consubstantiation ? This is answered by 
a Nicenist authority of acknowledged respectability, in 
these words : ' ' Consubstantiation is the term by which 
Luther expressed the opinion which he held upon the 
nature of the elements in the Eucharist, as distinguished 
from transubstantiation, the doctrine of the Romanists. 
The Romanists assert, as the word they use implies, that 
the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood 
of Christ, and lose their former substance, although they 
retain the appearance, miraculously, to the senses. The 
Lutherans deny this change, but affirm that while the 
bread and wine do still remain in their natural substance, 
the body and blood are at the same time transfused into 
them, and thus that both are actually partaken of together. " 
This Lutheran opinion incontestably shows that neither 
Luther nor his followers were more than partially rid of 
Romish influences, whereby they left their reformation in 
conspicuous need of further reform. Indeed, as to consub- 
stantiation, it looks much as if Luther hit upon it more for 
the sake of appearing to differ from Rome than of really 
differing, for as between it and transubstantiation, the 
latter is a shade the less unacceptable. Boldly to assert 
that the bread and wine are changed into Christ's body and 
blood is to rest the monstrous dogma on bare faith in the 
church ; that is, ' ' What were bread and wine have now 
become body and blood." There is the end of it and the 
mental exertion stops ; but to declare that the still sensibly 
bread and wine have had transfused into them Christ's body 
and blood so that communicants get the bread and wine 
and Christ's body and blood together, sets the mind upon 
the unsatisfied inquiry, ' ' Whence have come the body and 
blood, where do they reside, and what is the manner of 
their connexion with the material substances? Luther's 
dogmatism surpasses Rome's. Calvin's notion on this 
subject was thus : "I assert that the body of Christ is actu- 
ally given to us in the sacrament to be the saving food of 
our souls ; the Son of God offers daily to us in the holy 
sacrament the same body that he once offered in sacrifice 
to his Father, that it may be our spiritual food. If any one 
ask me concerning the manner, I will not be ashamed to 
confess that it is a secret too high for my reason to compre- 
hend, or my tongue to express. ' ' And thus it is that the 
shrewdest followers in the wake of the councils of the 
fourth and fifth centuries, after accepting or propounding 
to themselves insoluble enigmas, (where the scriptures fur- 



120 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

nish spiritual truths perfectly intelligible and convertible 
to the Christian's use,) have at last to acknowledge that 
they are unable to explain or even to understand them. 

The Augsburg Confession, the oldest of all the formula- 
ries of modern Christendom, was drawn up in the year 
I 53° by Philip Melancthon and approved by Luther. 
There are other such documents by Luther and others, 
but the Augsburg Confession contains the great magazine 
of Lutheran doctrines and dogmas. The Lutherans in 
Europe count fifty-five millions to eight hundred thousand 
in the United States. 

Before proceeding further, the remark presents itself 
that it is strange, almost to unaccountableness, that Calvin 
and Luther and their able and learned coadjutors should 
have given countenance to such a doctrine as consub- 
stantiation, or, as it was sometimes called, impanation, so 
near to transubstantiation that the distinction between 
them is almost without a difference. The knowledge of 
Luther, Calvin, &c, of the history of the middle ages 
could not but have taught them that the canon of the mass 
was started by Pope Gregory First towards the close of the 
sixth century. Notwithstanding this, everybody enjoyed 
the right of interpreting the manner of Christ's presence 
in the elements of the eucharist according to his own judg- 
ment, until Pope Innocent Third at the fourth Lateran 
council, in the year 12 15, arrogantly decreed how that 
presence should thereafter be" universally understood. This 
manner he described by the then newly-coined word tran- 
substantiation, implying a perfect conversion of the bread 
and wine from being bread and wine into the actual body 
and blood of Christ that hung upon the cross. This pope, 
to whom the Roman Catholic Church is indebted for the 
introduction of transubstantiation, was the same lamb- 
like innocent that put King John's kingdom of England 
under interdict, and organized in France and regions adja- 
cent the inquisition, for the suppression of every man and 
woman's bounden and sacred right and duty of learning 
the truth concerning God and Christ, and their own prepa- 
ration for an eternal world to come. The question recurs, 
what could have induced the so-called reformers of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to track after steps 
first imprinted by one pope of the sixth and deepened by 
another pope of the thirteenth century, — steps which by 
their own showing those reformers could neither explain 
nor understand? Can there be a better demonstration of 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 121 

the shortcomings of the alleged reformers as such, or of 
the incompleteness of their reformation ? 

Of the reformers who were upon the field of action three 
hundred years ago no one is more worthy of mention than 
Ulric Zwingli, who was born at the hamlet of Wildhaus, 
in the Tockenburg mountains, Swiss canton of St. Gall, 
on the first day of the year 1484, exactly seven weeks after 
the birth of Martin Luther. Ulric early developed a good 
capacity, and was sent to school successively at Basil, 
Berne, and Vienna, in Austria. He was ordained priest 
at twenty-two, and read his first mass at Wildhaus, his 
moral character being no worse than the generality of his 
cloth at that time, which is not saying very much. As 
early as 151 7 he conceived the possibility of abolishing the 
papacy. About this time he was transferred to Einsidleu, 
w r here there was an abbey, over a gate of which was in- 
scribed, ' ' Full forgiveness of all sins can be had here. ' ' 
The abbey had in it an image of the Virgin Mary, believed 
to be capable of working miracles, to which crowds of pil- 
grims resorted. A Franciscan monk from Milan, in Italy, 
named Bernardine Samson, had come to Switzerland under 
patronage of the pope for the purpose of selling indulgences, 
and had amassed a good deal of money. Samson was titular 
chaplain to the pope. On going through the cantons he 
announced that he was "empowered to remit all sins" ; 
"that he could dispose of Christ's merits to whoever would 
purchase them and bring their money for their indulgence. ' ' 
This aroused Zwingli, who had been elected preacher to 
the cathedral at Zurich, and who spared neither Samson 
nor his indulgences. At first the authorities of Zurich were 
indisposed to allow Samson to enter their city. But on 
his pretending to have some communication to make to the 
diet in the name of the pope, he was admitted, yet as his 
communication amounted to nothing more than matter 
relative to his indulgences, he was dismissed. He is re- 
ported to have carried back with him over the Sw r iss 
mountains three horse-cartloads of money. 

The bishop of Constance, not relishing Zwingli' s bear- 
ing towards indulgences and the like, sent a deputation to 
Zurich to put him down. One Hoffmann was at its head. 
He assailed Zwingli and his doctrines, to which the latter 
triumphantly replied that it was his right and duty to preach 
the Word of God, and not the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, 
or the Fathers, and that as bishop and pastor of Zurich he 
should insist on doing so. The Zurich city council sus- 
tained Zwingli. and the bishop's party were discomfited. 



122 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

But a change came over several of the Swiss states. 
They sided with the Pope and his friends, and Zurich was 
substantially alone in the defence of the principles of the 
Reformation; but at a discussion of some chief points before 
the Great Council, Zwingli was victorious, and the preaching 
of the gospel was made free. Zwingli was married in April, 
1524, to a widow named Reinhardt. Yet trouble was brew- 
ing outside the canton. Those cantons which remained 
attached to Rome found it impossible to form a close union 
with the Protestant or Reformed cantons, of which Zurich 
was a principal one. They were on the point of a struggle 
in 1529, but a temporary peace was patched up. In 1531 
the Catholic cantons provoked an outbreak, and their forces 
being much the more numerous, the Zuricherswere defeated 
at the battle of Cappel, and Zwingli, who was present as a 
chaplain, was killed October n, 1531. The fanatic soldiers 
of the victorious foe wreaked their vengeance by dismem- 
bering and burning the dead patriot's body. 

Zwingli' s memory should suffer no reproach from his ap- 
pearing with his countrymen in arms. No one, no matter 
what his profession in life, was exempt from military serv- 
ice in time of domestic war. On the subject of the Lord's 
supper the firmly-held opinions of Zwingli favorably con- 
trasted with the extravagant ideas of Luther and Calvin. 
Zwingli' s views were rational and consistent with an intel- 
ligent and practical interpretation of the Saviour's purpose 
and language, which were, that the breaking and offering 
to the disciples of the bread served at the supper-table in- 
dicated Christ's voluntary offering for their benefit of his 
body upon the cross, which was very soon to be but was not 
then yet erected. In like manner the free presentation of 
the cup of wine showed the equally voluntary shedding — 
to occur the next day — of his blood for them. The broken 
bread which Christ held (broken by himself) in his hand 
before dispensing it was not the body that was holding it, 
but was a figure or representation of that body the next 
day to be surrendered and sacrificed. So the common par- 
ticipation of the wine by the disciples was not a participa- 
tion in Christ's actual blood then circling in full current 
through the vessels of his body, but a participation in that 
which represented the life's blood that on the morrow would 
be shed upon the cross. Christ's purpose in saying what 
he did at the supper was to furnish his disciples with an 
intelligent comprehension of the purport of the harrowing 
scenes upon which he and they were entering. To them 
it was given to understand — not to be puzzled with — the 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 23 

mysteries of the Kingdom. The same mysteries are pre- 
sented to our intellectual apprehension, not to become 
objects of superstitious awe, but to feed our souls and to 
give us just conceptions of the principles that pervade the 
Divine government, and which encircle and bind our fate 
here and hereafter. 

Christ's method of presenting to the minds of his hearers 
the truths of his sublime yet simple religion was by simile 
or parable. Some of his parables, if looked at superficially, 
were not only hard to be understood but impossible to be 
accepted as statements of fact and doctrine. When Christ 
told the Jewish congregation in the synagogue at Caper- 
naum that he was ' ' the living bread that came down from 
heaven," and that "except they ate the flesh of the Son of 
man and drank his blood they could have no life in them," 
they experienced a natural repulsion at language so pre- 
posterous, for they perfectly well knew that Christ's body 
commenced, grew, and was nurtured from the earth, and 
in their not distant neighborhood. Many of his disciples, 
therefore, regarded it as "a hard saying, who could hear 
it ? " and ' ' from that time went back and walked no more 
with him." Now, the trouble with them was that though 
disciples the}'' were not discipled enough — not ' ' disciples 
indeed." Their interest in Christ's religion was not deep 
enough to cause them to investigate and struggle for a due 
comprehension of it; to confer with Christ personally as 
they could easily do, and so have every difficulty com- 
pletely solved. Christ did, indeed, on this occasion (as, in 
fact, was his custom) supply the displeased disciples with 
key enough to his seemingly dark saying to make all plain, 
for he gave them to understand that when he had been 
speaking of his body it was not the comparatively unprofit- 
able body of flesh but the body of his doctrine to which he 
alluded, and the spirit that dwelt within it was the blood 
or life thereof. A single verse removes all difficulty, " It 
is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing ; 
the words (or doctrine) that I speak unto you, they are 
spirit and they are life. ' ' The difficulty was not with the 
doctrine but with the hearers ; their hearts were too hard 
and unbelieving. 

When Christ, on another occasion, went out of the house 
and sat by the seaside, and then addressed the assembled 
multitudes from the little ship, he " spake in parables, and 
without a parable spake he not unto them. ' ' That is to 
say, he did not, as is the practice with ordinary preachers 
and teachers, talk on and on the sermon through, with the 



124 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

fate of having pretty much all that has been said forgotten 
within an hour or two, but he put something into the minds 
•of his hearers that, like a hard-shelled fruit, requires to 
be much revolved and broken through, as to its hard and 
repellent exterior, before the precious kernel comes to view. 
His sermons were deposits in the minds of his hearers, to 
be turned over and over again and again, and thoroughly 
digested; among crowds; in solitude; by day and by night; 
at home and abroad; and at every turn discovering a new 
aspect and a new value. When, after teaching those mul- 
titudes from the seaside and they were sent away, Christ 
returned to the house, and when certain of his disciples, who 
were the subjects of a healthy anxiety, questioned him for 
an explanation of his parable of the tares, he immediately, 
and with the greatest lucidity, explained it all. ' ' He that 
soweth the good seed," said Christ, "is the Son of man; the 
field is the world; the good seed are the children of the 
kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one," 
■&c, &c. Here the verb "is" or " are" stands equivalent 
to or substitute for the verb "mean," "represent," or 
1 ' signify. ' ' 

Whilst Luther, as Mosheim tells us, ' ' maintained that the 
foody and blood of Christ were really, though in a manner 
far beyond human comprehension, present in the Eucharist, 
and were exhibited together with the bread and wine, ' ' the 
" Swiss reformer looked upon the bread and wine in no 
other light than as the signs and symbols of the absent 
body and blood of Christ, and from the year 1524 propa- 
gated this doctrine in a public manner, and was subse- 
quently followed by Ecolampadius, a divine of Basil, and 
one of the most learned men of that century." Martin 
Bucer thought the same way. 

The opinion of Zwingli was that when Christ said, at the 
Paschal Supper, " Take, eat; this is my body," and " this 
'is my blood of the New Testament," he made the same use 
of the word " is" that he did in explaining the parable of 
the tares, and in other like cases, namely, " Take, eat; this 
bread represents my body, ' ' and ' ' this wine represents my 
blood of the New Testament, which is (will be to-morrow) 
shed for many." An effort was made by Philip, the pro- 
testant landgrave of Hesse Cassel, to procure an agreement 
between Zwingli and Luther as to the meaning of the 
Bucharistic feast, to which end a meeting of the two reform- 
ers, with their respective friends, took place at Marburg, 
the capital of Upper Hesse. The desired accordance was 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 25 

not achieved, each party continuing to think and teach as 
before. 

On the subject of the Athanasian Trinity it is stated that 
Zwingli adopted that doctrine ' ' mechanically. ' ' 

The Baptist Community comprises churches of many 
names, representing just so many differences in doctrinal 
opinion or manner of worship, but the main branches are 
the Particular Baptists and the General Baptists ; the former 
being Calvinistic and the latter Arminian in respect to- 
doctrine. Our attention will be directed to the former, of 
whom there are said to be in the United States two and a 
quarter million of actual members, and five million who 
hold the principles. The churches a little exceed in num- 
ber 24,800, with 15,500 ministers. In the whole world the 
churches are about 30,000, and seven millions of worship- 
pers. That distinguished evangelist, C. H. Spurgeon, is a 
Baptist minister. 

The Baptists, like the Presbyterians, are of the Nicene 
family, accepting as Christianity the dogmas that filtrated 
through the theological still set up by and worked under 
the direction of the Emperor Constantine in the year 325 
after Christ, with infusions from John Calvin. Similarly 
to their near of kin, they are, denominationally speaking, 
an active, energetic, ambitious body, very zealous, and much 
attached to their church and its systems of doctrine and 
polity. They have done and are doing much good in the 
world, and are the peers of the people of any denomination 
in personal worth and general respectability. At the same- 
time they are, perhaps, not quite perfect. 

An elaborate work of somewhat recent publication, and. 
manifestly accepted by the Baptist body, declares that 
' ' the Baptist denomination was founded by Jesus during his 
earthly ministry. Next to the great Teacher of Nazareth 
(says the book) our great leaders were the apostles and 
elders, bishops and evangelists, who preached Christ in 
their times. The instructions of our founder are contained 
in the four gospels ; the heaven-given teachings of our 
earliest ministers are in the inspired epistles. The first 
Baptist missionary journal was the Acts of the Apostles." 
This, it must be allowed, is considerably elate and jubilant, 
and may be regarded by some other descriptions of religion- 
ists as a trifle more appropriative than appropriate. But 
let us apply the canon, or measuring rule, for all such pre- 
tensions and see whether this Baptist claim comes quite 



126 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

up to the mark and demand of Him who is so confidently 
alleged to be the " Founder of the denomination." 

As to the one particular article of baptism, that is to say, 
baptism by immersion of the whole body, it can hardly be 
said that Christ was its founder or originator, for baptism • 
was in most extensive practice by John, surnamed the Bap- 
tist, when Jesus journeyed a couple of scores of miles, or 
thereabouts, from Galilee to Jordan to be baptized of him. 
As a practical administrator of baptism John certainly pre- 
ceded Jesus ; Jesus, therefore, can with no propriety be 
denominated its founder ; rather was he a partaker of it. 
That Christ confirmed the rite by his adoption of it in his 
own case is most certain ; that he, or rather his attendant 
disciples, baptized converts, and that he enjoined it as a 
perpetual initiatory rite to his church, are facts which no 
Christian will hesitate about, or omit to comply with in his 
own person, though, most likely, baptism after Christ's 
death meant more than baptism before that event. * 

Now, if Christ was the founder, and the apostles the 
leaders, and the gospels and epistles are the text books, of 
the Baptist denomination, will it not be reasonable to expect 
that the Baptists should be amongst the most pronounced 
of mankind in their "defence and confirmation of the 
gospel ' ' in its fundamental and elementary principles ? 
Ought any class of people on earth to be more resolute in 
rallying round, for instance, ' ' the first commandment of 
all, ' ' elsewhere called ' ' the first and great commandment ? ' ' 
But what is that preliminary, introductory, transcendent 
commandment of the religion of Christ? This is a very 
old question, and was directly put to Jesus Christ himself 
in his own proper person — say 1850 years ago. Is it not a 
little wonderful that the Baptists have never yet learned 
this prefatory command, but is it not a great deal more 
surprising that, for the most part, they resolutely refuse 
the right hand of fellowship to those that have learned to 



* According to Dr. Thomas Armitage's sumptuous " History of the Bap- 
tists," at page 211, the opinions of Athanasius, Jerome of Dalmatia and 
Basil were substantially the doctrine we have proposed in these pages. 
They regarded Christ's injunction of "baptizing into the name of the 
Father, of the Sou, and of the Holy Ghost," as primarily a matter of soul- 
instruction ; if secondarily, of body-immersion. In like manner (if their 
practice is an exponent of their opinion) thought the whole apostolic 
band, for nowhere do we read of a corporeal baptism according to the 
modernly alleged " formula." It is stated in the " History " that Hippo- 
lytus, the Council of Nice, and even the golden-mouthed Chrysostom, 
with many others that ought to have known better, went sadly astray on 
this subject, preaching and teaching, in fact, "dangerous heresy." 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. I2J 

strive to keep it ? Said a listening and approving Jewish 
scribe to Jesus, ' ' Which is the first commandment of all ? ' ' 
To which Jesus instantaneously answered, u The first of 
all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel. The Lord our 
God is One Lord ; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind, and with all thy strength ; this is the first command- 
ment. And the second is like, namely, this, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other com- 
mandment greater than these. 1 ' To which the scribe 
rejoined, tk Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there 
is One God and there is none other but He. ' ' And when 
Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto the 
scribe, l ' Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. ' ' 
From this important passage of the gospel we are taught 
that a belief in the indivisible Oneness of God is the essen- 
tial introductory part of the first commandment of all, to 
which the attention of Israel, and of all others who desire 
to believe aright, is most pointedly called. But in this 
prime and great injunction, taught first through the mouth 
of Moses, the predecessor and prototype of Christ, and then 
reaffirmed in the most public and positive manner by Jesus, 
our Baptist friends propose a change by way of amendment. 
They decline to hold to the idea common to the Messiah 
and the discreet scribe that God is One only. The godhead, 
say the Baptists, is indeed One, but there are contained in 
this One godhead three distinct persons, each severally 
God, viz. , God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy 
Ghost, and infer, what is quite remarkable, that the same 
Jesus who so emphatically announced the Divine L T nity 
was himself all the while the second person of the aforesaid 
three, though for some unknown reason he concealed or 
omitted to mention it, and made use of language entirely 
inconsistent therewith. Any way, the Baptists reject the 
doctrine of Jesus and the Jewish scribe, and substitute for 
it a theory or doctrine that came originally out during the 
fourth century after Christ, from a collection of between 
three and four hundred men at an imperial city beyond the 
Bosphorus, whose angry disputes and tumultuary behavior 
for several weeks formed the strongest possible contrast to 
the peaceful unanimity of the Lord Jesus and the Jewish 
scribe. It is rather improbable that our Baptist friends 
often make the vk first commandment of all " the subject of 
their pulpit meditations. 

In addition to Christ's teaching that God is One, in the 
simple and proper acceptation of that Unity, he also taught 



128 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

that absolute goodness in its full and perfect extent is predi- 
cable only of this One God. Christ promptly repelled 
from himself the ascription of goodness, and said, " There 
is none good but One, that is, God," still indicating the 
strict unity of the Most High. To establish any doctrine 
inconsistent with this, it was indispensable to set up some 
authority other than Christ's. Nicene doctrine could flow 
only from a Nicene Council. 

In the momentous matter of prayer, to whom and how it 
should be offered, Christ's instructions were neither obscure 
nor deficient. The Nicenist habit is to offer prayer to the 
Father, Son, and Spirit, but especially to the Son, to whom 
devotional hymns are far more numerously addressed than 
to either or both of the other participants in the Trinity. I 
find by actual count of the hymns in a small Baptist hymnal 
that 199 are addressed to the Son, 50 to the Father, 7 to' 
the Holy Ghost and 5 to the Trinity, out of 426 hymns in 
all, the remainder being mostly of a general character. 

But let us specifically betake ourselves to the Christian 
law and testimony, that is to say, to the precepts of the 
Lord and Master. As prayer is a matter of practical duty, 
Christ placed the subject before his disciples in the plainest 
and most practical way. "After this manner, therefore," 
he said, "pray ye, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed 
be thy name; may thy kingdom come and thy will be 
done, ' ' &c. , &c. The command is to pray to the Father, 
and impliedly to the Father only, for the Father only is 
mentioned. All chance of ambiguity or mistake is thus 
anticipated; the one sole object of prayer is alone spoken of. 
All the nouns, pronouns and verbs throughout the prayer 
relating to the proper object of it are in the singular 
number. Not a word or hint is there about any two other 
beings, the Son and the Holy Ghost, as equally entitled 
with the Father to be invoked., No such thing in letter or 
spirit as, ' ' O, Holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three 
persons and One God," — nothing so alien to Christ, to his 
apostles and to the whole Bible. 

Further, Christ himself was eminently prayerful. His- 
life was a life of prayer. It was because of their witnessing 
Christ's devotion to prayer that his disciples besought him 
to teach them to pray; — they did not mean to himself. To 
whom did Jesus Christ pray? To none other but that same 
Father he had indicated to them, for the simple and just 
reason that God was "his Father and their Father, his God 
and their God. ' ' 

So jealous was Jesus of his Father's just rights and peer- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 29 

less glory that he deemed it necessary to warn his followers, 
before his final departure from the world, against a tempta- 
tion that might assail them in the more or less distant 
future of tendering him Divine honors and invoking him 
in prayer. " In that day," said Christ, " ye shall ask me 
nothing; verily, verily, I say unto you, "Whatsoever ye 
shall ask the Father in my name (that is, as members of 
my body, the church) He will give it you" — teaching 
thereby that the proprietorship of all blessings and mercies 
resides in the Father only, who was and is accessible by 
prayer made in the name of His Son. How wide is this 
from the theory and practice of nearly the whole so-called 
Christian world ! 

In that memorable interview at Jacob's well in Sychar 
Christ announced to the Samaritans the same sublime 
truths he had proclaimed everywhere else. He apprized 
the Samaritans of the worthlessness of their superstitious 
worship as compared with the saving qualities of the 
worship which he himself and his fellow-countrymen, the 
Jews, offered to the Most High. Yet, after all, (he told 
them,) the true worship was not a worship of place or 
form, but the worship of the heart — a worship in spirit 
and in truth! About the association of any other being 
or name with the Father's as an object of worship Christ 
was profoundly silent ; so that the many Samaritan be- 
lievers who were converted under his instructions could 
have known nothing of those doctrines which in after and 
these present days are so unctuously styled ' ' evangelical, ' y 
and said to be indispensable to salvation. 

Intermitting numberless, irresistible testimonies to the 
same great truths, we arrive in our way through the gospels, 
at that most impressive address of Jesus to his Heavenly 
Father, in which he declares it to be " life eternal ' ' to 
know Him, the Father, as the ' ' only true God, ' ' and Jesus 
Christ as the one whom the ' ' only true God ' ' hath ' ' sent. ' ' 
Perhaps this is the greatest and sublimest text in either 
Old or New Testament. Being solemnly addressed by 
the Son of God to his Almighty and Gracious Father, it 
could scarcely escape this distinction. And to our human 
hearts, rightly attuned, what can address them like the 
hope of "life eternal"? — God's greatest of all gifts — be- 
yond adequate contemplation! The whole seventeenth 
chapter of John's gospel is unique ; it savors of the unity, 
the love, and bliss of heaven, where all shall be one in the 
indwelling, free Spirit of the Father, with the Redeemer 
and redeemed ' ' made perfect in one. ' ' 



130 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

The gospel of John terminates with a pointed notifica- 
tion of the purpose for which it was written. The opening 
chapter records the testimonies of John the Baptist, of An- 
drew, the brother of Peter, and of Nathanael, to the foun- 
dation fact that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the Son 
of God and King of Israel. The twentieth chapter, after 
stating that many of the miraculous works which Jesus 
performed in the presence of his disciples were not described 
in that gospel, adds the testimony of John, the evangelist 
and apostle, to the same great fact which all men are called 
upon to believe, viz. , that ' ' Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
God, and that believing, they might have life through his 
name." Nothing less does it say, nothing more, but just 
this, that Jesus is not God, not God the Son, but the Christ, 
' ' the Son of God that taketh away the sin of the world. ' ' 
Some have assumed for this particular composition of the 
beloved disciple the design of inculcating Nicenist ideas 
and principles. No greater misconception could be enter- 
tained, for the very contrary is true. The Bible contains 
no book which furnishes proportionally more testimonies 
to the sole godhead of the Father and the sonship, and 
subordination to him, of Jesus the Christ. 

The first act of the apostles after Christ's ascension was 
the filling of the gap in their number caused by the treason 
and death of Judas Iscariot. They selected two, from whom 
they prayed to the Lord, their lately-risen master, to choose 
the one he might prefer. In this instance of prayer to Christ 
there was less of prayer in its ordinary nature and purpose 
than of direct personal reference to him of a question in 
which they knew his interest was paramount. There was, 
therefore, in it no infraction of the spirit, and scarcely of 
the letter, of his command to "ask him nothing" after his 
corporeal disappearance from the earth. It was entirely 
proper that the Master, who had originally chosen the 
twelve, should add whom he preferred to the remaining 
eleven. He chose Matthias, and this made up the comple- 
ment. The only other instance in the book of the Acts 
where prayer was offered to Christ is that wherein Stephen 
the martyr cried aloud, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 
But this, too, was a special personal occasion, a resignation 
into the hands of Christ, by which Stephen testified of his 
unseen, yet continued and immediate care of his people 
and of his headship over all things to the church, his body. 
When Michael Servetus was bound to the fiery stake at the 
instigation of John Calvin, he too cried aloud, "Jesus, thou 
Son of the Eternal God, have mercy upon me. ' ' 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 131 

The book of the Acts, though not written by the Apostle 
John, follows John's gospel and the other gospels in testi- 
fying that ' ' Truly, this man, Jesus, was the Son of God. ' ' 
It is scattered here and there throughout the whole book, 
about which it might be said with truth that if any man 
or woman as yet unacquainted with the foundation doc- 
trines of the Christian religion desires to be informed in 
the surest and quickest way and upon the best authority, 
the single book of the Acts is to be recommended for the 
purpose. There is no church catechism to be compared 
to it. Let this book be first thoroughly and prayerfully 
perused and well understood, and a knowledge of the 
Christian faith in all its essential parts will be the happy 
result. We have in it the teaching and preaching of Peter, 
the first among the equal apostolic brethren, with his close 
companion, John, to all sorts of people, Jews and Gentiles, 
priesthood and laity, rich and poor, learned and ignorant. 
The preaching of Stephen, the first Christian martyr who 
was permitted to behold with his bodily eyes the secret 
interior of the court of heaven; of Philip the Evangelist, 
who baptized the eunuch; of that good man and full of the 
Holy Ghost, Barnabas; of James; of the prophets Judas and 
Silas; and last, though second to none, the celestially con- 
verted persecutor and admirable thirteenth Apostle, Paul. 
Now, all these were Jews and, until converted and at length 
fully taught, as thoroughly steeped in the prejudices pecu- 
liar to the Jewish nation as any people in it. If members 
of the Roman Catholic communion ever vindicated their 
rights as the freeborn offspring of the Lord Supreme, and 
conferred upon themselves the grace and mercy of exercis- 
ing their faculties and reflecting on the contents of the Word 
of God — which it is to be feared they seldom or never dare 
to do — they would not open upon more than two chapters 
of the book of the Acts before being struck with the world- 
wide difference between the Peter who displays himself 
there, and the Saint Peter as he stands pictured before 
their own spellbound imaginations. Suppose they were to 
put themselves for a moment into the place of Peter's audi- 
tory and fancy themselves addressed by the apostle thus : 
<( Ye men of the Roman Catholic persuasion, hear these 
words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among 
you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by 
him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know ' ' — down 
to the end of Peter's address. The question is, Would such 
supposed Catholic hearers be "pricked in their heart" as 
those self-convicted Jews were, and ask, " What shall we 



132 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

do? " Would they not rather say, ' ' Oh, that kind of preach- 
ing is too tame and lame for us — there is nothing at all in 
it about God-the-Son and God-the-Holy-Ghost, and the 
Trinity, and the Incarnation, and the Hypostatic Union, 
and Mary the mother of God, and the chair of Peter, and 
our Holy Father the pope, and the sacrifice of the mass, and 
purgatory, and holy water, and the sign of the cross, and 
saying prayers in Latin, and a great many other things that 
we have been accustomed to." Then, continuing onward, 
if examination were made of other sermons and speeches of 
Peter, they would all be found to the same effect, "How 
that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost 
and with power; who went about doing good and healing 
all that were oppressed of the devil ; for God was with him. ' ' 
There is mention here made of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, 
all very near together and luminously treated of, so that 
language could not pack more and more faithful doctrine 
into fewer words. Yet we have never seen this divinely- 
expressed text quoted in support of the Trinity. Can we 
conjecture why? Is it not because the text is too distinctly 
bright with truth and precision to admit of a shade of doubt 
about its meaning, not giving place to any uncertainty, as 
is somewhat the case with Matt. 28: 19, especially when 
mistranslated as in our common Bibles ? 

So in the case of Paul. When at Athens Paul felt im- 
pelled to address the polished but polytheistic Greeks, of 
which address on Mars Hill we have a very satisfactory 
compendium in the 17th chapter of the Acts. Here was an 
opportunity not to be surpassed for offering to an assembly 
tolerably fresh and unprepossessed the exact truth, what- 
ever it might be, monotheistic or polytheistic. From their 
habits and general drift of thought, however, it does not 
seem extravagant to suppose that if monotheism and poly- 
theism were evenly presented them for choice, they would 
have accepted the latter, since the subtleties of the Trinity 
might have been captivating to just that very style of people. 
What, however, does Paul really say in remarking on 
the altar inscribed " To the Unknown God " ? Unity or 
Triplicity ? But one answer can be made — Unity through- 
oat. The One God "who made the world will judge it in 
righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained : whereof 
he hath given assurance unto all men in that He hath 
raised him from the dead." We shall leave it to Nicenists 
of all denominations to administer to the manes and mem- 
ory of Paul the condign punishment he brought down upon 
himself for neglecting an opportunity at the heart of intel- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 33 

lectual Greece, so excellent for inculcating doctrines which 
stand on the forefront of the now current creeds, confessions, 
decrees of councils, articles of religion, institutes, and what 
not. Even more than that ; instead of teaching the Trinity 
he taught the simple Unity of God and the simple humanity 
of Christ — exactly the doctrine that burnt Servetus, Gentili, 
and others. 

The voluminousness of the New Testament epistles will 
necessitate a mere passing recital of those leading texts 
which may be regarded as the great landmarks of Divine 
truth. 

In Romans, 5:15, we learn that God's gracious gift of 
redemption comes through the intervention of "one man, 
Jesus Christ. ' ' In 1st Corinthians we find the people of 
God addressed and informed that the things ' ' of the world, 
or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all 
are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." This 
is the just order of gradation. So elsewhere; "the head 
■of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the 
man, and the head of Christ is God." Speaking of objects 
of worship, Paul says there is "no other God but One. ' ' 
For ' ' though ' ' says he, ' ' there be that are called gods and 
lords, and they are numerous, ' ' still " to us (professors of 
the Christian faith) there is but One God, (specifically,) the 
Father; and One Lord, Jesus Christ. ' ' In that incomparable 
chapter, the 15th of the 1st Corinthians, Paul gives us 
what is called the eschatology of our race. In the resur- 
rection every man will rise in his own order, ' ' Christ ' ' (being 
man) "was the first fruits" from the grave; "afterwards 
they that are Christ's at his (second) coming." "Then 
cometh the end, when Christ shall have delivered up the 
kingdom to the God and Father; when he shall have put 
down all rule and all authority and power. For he must 
reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last 
enemy that shall be destroyed is death, for he hath put all 
things under his feet. But when he saith all things are 
put under him (that is, under Christ) it is manifest that He 
(namely, God) is excepted who did put all things under 
Him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him 
(Christ) then shall the Son also himself (for the great medi- 
atorial and recuperative achievement will have been worked 
through) be subject unto Him (God) that put all things 
under him (Christ), that God may be all in all." It can 
hardly be said that the Gloria Patri, &c, &c, so much 
repeated by our Episcopal friends in their services, is con- 
sistent either in letter or meaning with the foregoing 



134 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

teachings of the great Apostle. When God, the Father, 
shall thus be "all in all," then will have come that "resti- 
tution of all things " spoken of by the Apostle Peter in the 
book of the Acts; when, also, it shall be, as foretold by the 
prophet Zechariah, that "Jehovah shall be King over all 
the earth; in that day shall there be One Lord, and His 
name One." And so throughout eternity. 

In Galatians, the Son of God is described as ' ' made of a 
woman, made under the law," not a word appearing like 
what is contained in the Nicene creed, that he was "begot- 
ten of his Father before all worlds; came clown from heaven 
and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost;" — about all of 
which, as it was not heard of till between two and three 
hundred years after Paul's death, Paul could, of course, 
know nothing. 

In Ephesians, speaking of the unity of the Spirit and of 
the church, Paul shows how the idea of unity pervades 
every department of the Christian system ; there being no 
hint, even, of triplicity, or trinity, anywhere. He says there 
is "One Lord; One faith; One baptism; One God and 
Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you 
all." Relative to the final object of human gratitude, Paul 
repeats in spirit and almost in letter the command of Christ 
to his disciples, "Giving thanks, always, for all things unto 
the God and Father, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." 
In Philippians Paul describes the self-humiliation and the 
incomparable exaltation of Christ, so ' ' that every tongue 
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (he does not say 
God) to the glory of God the Father. ' ' The just distinction 
cannot be overlooked. 

In Colossians, Paul gives thanks, always to God the 
Father, as the original source of every mercy and blessing, 
"who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and 
hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his 
love," — of that Son who is not " the invisible God " and is 
not "the Creator" but who is the moral image or likeness 
of the God that is invisible, and the "first born of every 
creature." No one will suppose that an image, a likeness, 
a picture, is the original of which it is only a representa- 
tion. Therefore Christ is not the God of whom he is the 
image. And, if a " creature, ' ' he is not the Creator. The 
teachings of Paul and the dictates of common sense coin- 
cide; the dogmas of Nicenism disagree with both. 

In Thessalonians we find the same. "Thanks to God." 
Thanks to Him who is continuallv called "Our Father." 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 35 

Christ's Father is called by Paul "the living and true 
God," reminding us of Christ's own similar language. 

In the first epistle to Timothy, God is called "the only 
wise," "eternal king," "immortal," "invisible." And 
the ' ' knowledge of the truth ' ' Paul declares to be that 
' ' there is One God and one mediator between God and 
men, the man Christ Jesus. ' ' Unto this pure doctrine Paul 
declares he was ' ' ordained to be a preacher and an Apos- 
tle," truthfully and without falsehood. Paul's ascription 
to God the Father is magnificent and sublime ; the blessed 
and only Potentate ; the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; 
who only hath immortality ; dwelling in the light which 
no man can approach unto ; whom no man hath seen or 
can see ; to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. ' ' 

Passing by the three briefer intervening epistles we come 
to that outpouring of Divine wisdom and goodness con- 
stituting the epistle to the Hebrews. By it we are taught 
not only the majesty and mercy of God, but the exceed- 
ingly high dignity in the scale of the universe accorded 
to the race of man. Man is the child of the All-supreme, 
whilst the angels are but His ministers. Man is the being 
to whom the Lord of the universe has " put in subjection 
the world to come, ' ' over which world, redeemed from all 
imperfection and become the Israel of God, Christ, the Son 
of man, and captain of man's salvation, will preside as 
God's vicegerent. The letter to the Hebrews points our 
"look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; 
who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the 
cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right 
hand of the throne of God. ' ' So looking, and correspond- 
ingly acting, we shall "come unto Mount Sion and unto 
the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and 
to an innumerable company of angels ; to the general 
assembly and church of the first born who are written in 
heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of 
just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the 
New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which 
speaketh better things than that of Abel." In all the 
richness of exposition with which this book abounds no 
trace can be detected of reference to Christ's pre-existent 
glory; nothing of his "leaving the starry crown," or 
"glory- circled throne," or "laying his robes aside" in 
some previous state of being before Gabriel announced to 
the virgin whose name was Mary that she had found favor 
with God and would be the mother of a successor to King 
David who would reign over the house of Jacob forever. 



136 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Christ's eye was not fixed upon anything that he had pre- 
viously professed, but upon the "joy that was set before 
him, ' ' for the sake of which he ' ' endured the cross, de- 
spising the shame," and was exalted to a place at God's 
right hand. 

This epistle plainly evinces that Christ was not and is 
not God, because he was and is a high priest to God, a 
" high priest of good things to come" appearing in heaven 
itself as the forerunner and representative of all who be- 
lieve in him as the Messiah. It ought to be needless to 
repeat that if Christ were "a high priest," and "a priest 
forever after the order of Melchisedec, ' ' he could not be 
the God to whom he was a priest. No such irrationality 
as that tarnishes the noble epistle to the Hebrews or any 
of the writings of its renowned author, nor, indeed, any 
part of the Old or New Testaments. The word of God 
throughout addresses itself to the healthy faculties and 
right reason of the family of man. 

The epistle of the Apostle James, the brother, or rather, 
the cousin of the Lord Jesus, was directly addressed from 
the city of Jerusalem, where James continually dwelt, "to 
the twelve tribes of Israel that were scattered abroad." 
The epistle is fraught with the richest stores of heavenly 
wisdom for earthly use, chiefly of a practical character. If 
James's ideas were Nicenist, it cannot but be supposed that 
his epistle, having been addressed to Jews all over the ancient 
world, would be doctrinally controversial to no inconsider- 
able extent, for he would have written to a class of men 
always, then as now, extremely hostile to any idea that 
conflicted with their foundation-stone of faith in the strict 
unity of God. But there is very little reference throughout 
the epistle to mere doctrine, though in one place James 
says, "Thou believest that there is One God ; thou doest 
well; the devils also believe and tremble." James and his 
Jewish brethren were, therefore, on this point, entirely 
consentient; that is to say, no such dogma as the Trinity 
and no such notions as Nicenist or Athanasian notions had 
any lodgment in their minds. 

It is held to be a sound maxim to explain scripture by 
scripture — the difficult by the plain, when that is happily 
possible. James, with a simple eloquence and beauty be- 
tokening the Divine, says, "Every good gift and every 
perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the 
Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, 
neither shadow of turning, ' ' or, as the Revised Version more 
accurately gives it in English, "With whom can be no 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 37 

variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning" ; that is, 
with whom always and under all circumstances there is 
undoubted light. Now, to a childish or uninformed mind 
which had never become acquainted with scripture lan- 
guage, this phraseology of the Apostle might quite natur- 
ally at first sight appear strange, for the person would 
reasonably say "I do not comprehend how God's gifts 
should be said to fall down from the sky. ' ' Reflexion and 
attention would, however, in due time teach that the ex- 
pressions ' ' from above ' ' and ' ' cometh down ' ' indicate 
that the gifts do not originate from an earthly source, but 
have their first impulse in the merciful purpose of God, who 
setteth and keepeth the thousand million-fold concerns of 
the earth — yes, and of the illimitable universe — in due suc- 
cession and order. The same reflexion and attention would 
likewise suggest that the language of James supplies a key 
to the Saviour's meaning when he said, ' ' I came down from 
heaven," and "I am the bread which came down from 
heaven," which so much confounded the Jews who heard 
them from the Saviour's mouth. Christ as little meant 
that he had personally descended or alighted upon the 
earth from the celestial realm, as James meant to say that 
the blessed munificence of the Divine Parent rolls down 
visibly in bales or packages upon the earth beneath. Yet 
the Saviour's language is equally as much misunderstood 
to-day by millions of minds who wait upon Christian — yes, 
upon Protestant — ministrations as they were misinterpreted 
hy Christ's Jewish auditors. One of the purposes Christ 
had in view in the use of this language, which is by no 
means incorrect in itself, was to lift the minds of his hearers 
from a slavish subjection to merely local and temporal ideas 
up to a juster conception of the universality and spirituality 
in which they then and we now really dwell. In a very 
noteworthy text of scripture Jesus said, "If a man love 
me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, 
and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. ' ' 
And in Revelations, chapter 3d, Christ says, ' ' If any man 
hear my voice and open the door to me, standing and 
knocking on the outside, I will come in to him and will 
•sup with him and he with me." By such phraseology 
as this our good and gracious Master inculcates the near- 
ness of God and Christ to every soul of us, and how practi- 
cally we might, if we will, avail ourselves of their sacred 
society. 

The two epistles of Peter, like that of James, are general 
letters, addressed to the Christian brethren scattered 



138 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

throughout Asia Minor. Like his preaching in the book 
of the Acts, they are consistent with his Jewish origin and 
education in divine things, to which had been superadded 
a rooted faith in Jesus the Messiah. Not a Nicene thought 
appears from beginning to end, but there are quite distinct 
intimations of the designs of the Most High as to the future 
destiny of the world which we inhabit, that there shall be 
"new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth right- 
eousness. ' ' 

The general epistles of the Apostle John are specially 
impressive of the messiahship of Jesus and of the entire 
reality and genuineness of his bodily death and resurrection. 

The epistle of Jude, the brother of James, exposes those 
who deny the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. 

We come at length to the concluding volume of the 
Sacred Record, the Revelation of St. John the divine, that 
is, the theologian. This revelation came to John through 
the intervention of Christ, but Christ was not its original 
author, for "God gave it unto him." It will be remem- 
bered the gospel speaks of Christ telling his disciples that 
the time of the coming of the great day of account no man 
knew, "no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither 
the Son, but the Father." Again, after his resurrection, 
he replied to the eager desire of his Apostles for informa- 
tion as to when Christ would "restore again the kingdom 
to Israel," that it was not for them " to know the times or 
the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power/ 1 
or, as the Revised Version renders it, "which the Father 
hath set within his own authority." We perceive, then, 
that vast as was the scope of the authority and powers and 
knowledge delegated to Christ, it was not universal. There 
were limits which that blessed one freely acknowledged 
and declared, and showed thereby that great as was his 
own dominion it was circumscribed by the illimitable rule 
of his Father. Christ, therefore, was not the Father's 
equal, and was not, and is not, God. His Father was and 
is greater than he. 

In speaking of the Most High, this last book of the 
scripture canon furnishes the same testimony as did one of 
the very earliest, sixteen hundred years before. Moses was 
commanded to give to the children of Israel then in Egypt 
the words "I AM," as the name of God, implying the 
Self-existent, Everlasting ONE. In announcing <rrace and 
peace to the seven churches of Asia, John speaks of God 
as He "who is, and who was, and who is to come" — and 
so on throughout — the Self-existent and Eternal. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 39 

Before passing forward from this cursory review of the 
several books of the New Testament, allusion might be 
made to the solemn warnings conveyed in the concluding 
chapter of the Revelations, of which the former is the suc- 
cinct command to "Worship God," and therefore no other 
than God ; and the latter is, to add nothing to nor diminish 
from the Word of God as written and delivered to mankind. 
The same solemn admonition was published, more 'than 
once, under the old Jewish dispensation. Unhappily, our 
Bibles have been for ages and centuries disfigured by inter- 
polated or added matter, which could have been placed 
there for no other purpose but to furnish evidence in behalf 
of human inventions which the pure scriptures did not 
teach, and thereby to pervert the faith of millions. The 
Revised Version it was well worth while to make, but when 
making it might have been more thoroughly and honestly 
done. 

We are now in a somewhat better condition to determine 
with truth and fairness whether our exultant Baptist cham- 
pion stands entirely justified in his appropriation of the 
Saviour and his Apostles as the very especial patrons and 
leaders of his church. There is nothing in the gospel ac- 
count of the generation, gestation, birth, infancy, youth, 
manhood, and induction of Jesus into his supereminent 
office of Christ, or of his career therein, that will confirm 
the verity and propriety of those doctrines which the Bap- 
tists have adopted en masse from the councils of Nice and 
elsewhere, and which have flowed, along with other cor- 
ruptions, through the polluted channels of the dark ages. 
Whilst Christ is claimed as par eminence the founder and 
exemplar of the Baptist denomination, they have not re- 
spected his judgment on so prime a matter as "the first 
commandment of all" sufficiently to make it their own, 
but — notwithstanding all we hear about their self-direction, 
democratic independence of thought, and the like — have 
permitted themselves to drift along, impelled by the force 
of the common current, and to feel pride in the association. 
Hence, notwithstanding the opportunities and advantages 
their position has afforded them, they are, except upon the 
single important point of baptism by immersion, undistin- 
guishable from the general mass of Nicenists. 

We cannot enter into argument specially to demonstrate 
in how many respects the Baptists are variant in their views 
from Christ and his Apostles; but having just mentioned 
one principal point as to Christ, will call attention to their 
comparative standing with one for whom they not unfre- 



140 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

quently profess unbounded admiration — that is to say, the 
Apostle Paul. 

If we turn to the twentieth chapter of what our champion 
calls ' ' the first Baptist Missionary Journal, the Acts of the 
Apostles, ' ' we shall find that Paul, when at Miletus, sent 
for the elders of the Church of Ephesus, (from which city 
Miletus was distant about twenty-eight of our miles,) with 
whom he had a conference, expecting never again to visit 
that region. After reminding them of the apostolic devo- 
tion and disinterestedness of his life whilst among them, 
he calls them to witness that he had ' ' kept back nothing 
that was profitable to them," but had testified to them, 
both Jews and Gentiles, publicly and privately, their solemn 
religious obligations of " repentance towards God and faith 
towards the Lord Jesus Christ." He took them then and 
there to ' ' record that he was pure from the blood of all men, 
for that he had not shunned to declare unto them all the 
counsel of God. ' ' The people of his charge consisted of 
Jews and Gentiles. The Jews of that day, like their fathers 
before them and their descendants of this day, were im- 
movable believers in the One Only God; to wit, the scribe 
who accosted Christ (Mark, 12: 28) respecting the first com- 
mandment of all. Now, if the Trinity and other associated 
dogmas were and are true, and a belief of them was and is 
indispensable to salvation, as Baptists and other Nicenists 
insist, why did not Paul teach those dogmas as "profitable" 
for belief and profession, because a part of the "counsel of 
God ? ' ' No such teaching, however, anywhere appears, 
for, had it appeared, it would have aroused a controversy be- 
tween Paul and the Jewish converts earnest and emphatic 
beyond parallel, and not unlikely to prove the grave of 
Christianity everywhere. The Jews of our own day have 
no valid reason for refusing Christ as their Messiah, yet 
they point to the Trinity, a dogma Paul did not teach, as a 
justifying excuse for rejecting the doctrine Paul did teach, 
and that with all the solicitude his spiritual, mental, and 
physical organizations could exert. Such is the inconse- 
quential status of Jewish argumentation at this day, but 
the bulk of those who account themselves Christians are 
about equal participants with the Jews in the logical and 
religious perversion. 

The general conclusion is obvious; no such doctrines as 
the Trinity or the Incarnation and the rest were either 
"profitable " or any part of the " counsel of God." Paul 
did not teach them or know anything about them, except, 
perhaps, by prophetic foresight that they were amongst 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 14X 

those ' ' perverse things " to be thereafter spoken of by 
"men that should arise" within the Christian fold itself 
"to draw away disciples after them." That such false 
teachers did eventually arise and overwhelm the Christian 
world with their ' ' perversities ' ' the history of the post- 
apostolic ages but too abundantly and sorrowfully proves. 

The Baptists firmly adhere to their specialty of immer- 
sion and adult baptism. They proclaim the rights of 
conscience, private judgment, and free expression in all 
properly religious matters, without interference from eccle- 
siastical or civil authority. They claim the independence 
of every individual church as to faith and worship, subject 
only to the law of Christ. They profess the Bible to be 
their only guide, source of knowledge, and standard of 
authority in religion, and that whatever is taught therein 
is to be believed, and what is ordained, to be obeyed. 
Christ, they say, is the only lawgiver to his church. 

Notwithstanding all this brave profession, they prac- 
tically acknowledge to reading their Bibles through Cal- 
vin's spectacles, and subject themselves to the consequent 
distortions; — a thing the more surprising since they assert 
Calvin to have been one of the very strongest of all foes to* 
their baptismal system, for he abolished adult immersion 
wherever he could and put paedobaptism into its place. The 
Baptists declare their religious independence of all "princes 
and pontiffs, councils and conventions, ' ' yet where could 
they find a more thoroughgoing pontiff than Calvin, and, 
as such, one more inimical than he to the free exercise of 
thought, tongue, and pen? Touching their supposed free- 
dom from allegiance to ' ' councils and conventions, ' ' have 
they not quietly turned their backs upon the plain and 
positive teachings of Moses and the prophets, of Christ and 
his apostles, and gone after Nice and Constantinople, Con- 
stantine and Theodosius? If Cain, as the Apostle John 
says, ' ' was of that wicked one and slew his brother, ' ' 
whence was the prompting in Calvin's heart to perpetrate, 
after years of deliberation, with equal opportunity for ap- 
peasement, an act of the same description as Cain's? Was 
it well and good to select such a one for a master and 
guide? Were the teachings and examples of Christ and 
his apostles so imperfect and unsatisfactory that their lack 
or demerit needed to be supplied from Calvin's fulness? 
And practically, as matter of fact, are not sincere and well- 
meaning applicants for baptism by immersion sometimes 
turned away because they find themselves unable to voice 
response to the Calvinistic shibboleth? 



142 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Furthermore: are the ideas entertained by Baptists touch- 
ing the true honor and glory of the Most High always such 
as become His worshipping subjects? Is it ever heard 
among Baptists that God could die, could be subject to 
death ? How scriptural and how right is the phrase, 
" Christ, the Mighty Maker, died, for man's, the creature's, 
sin ; " or this other, ' ' the death of Christ, my God ' ' ? Does 
the Bible furnish any pattern for or justification of such 
expressions? If not, may there not be a field for really 
Christian missionaries to Baptists as well as from them? 
And, altogether, is there not room and some little occa- 
sion for Baptists to abate somewhat of their stem and lofty 
tone, and candidly to acknowledge that, after all, they are 
neither so Reformed nor so scriptural as they might be ? 
Especially might this happen after the exertion of a little 
modest and sincere introspection. 



TO THE JEWS. 



In any snpposable controversy between a Jew and an 
Athanasian as to the Divine nature, common candor must 
admit that, taking the Old Testament for testimony in the 
case, the oneness or unity of God is abundantly proven, 
and the Jew must be adjudged the victor. The texts in 
Exodus, chapters 3d, 6th, and 20th ; Deut. , 5th and 6th, 
and the prophets at large, are conclusive that God is a 
single being. 

This the Athanasian will not verbally disallow, but will 
nevertheless allege that in this One God, or rather god- 
head, there are included three distinct individualities, 
each equal to each of the others, and that when in the Old 
Testament God, Jehovah, or the Lord, is spoken of, it must 
be understood of this alleged composite and triple being. 

All this might be disingenuous enough, and, in fact, a 
fetch, and a something wholly unsuspected and unthought 
of for more than a millenium and a half, yet such is the 
now prevailing Athanasian doctrine. Much and sufficient- 
ly subtle argument is advanced in behalf of it, which the 
Athanasians think ought to be regarded as convincing. 
Thus the Athanasian, Charles Leslie, in his ' ' Short and 
Easy Method with the Jews, ' ' whilst warmly declaring that 
1 ' we profess to worship none other but that one only God 
who spoke in Horeb out of the midst of the fire, and 
detest all thoughts of any other God, ' ' yet advocates ' ' the 
Blessed Trinity, ' ' and asks k ' whether this one most simple 
and uncompounded nature of God may not be communi- 
cated to these eternal persons without either confusion of 
the persons or dividing of the substance, and does in no 
way interfere with the unity of the nature, because this 
very hypothesis supposes the unity of the nature in the 
strictest sense that is possible ?'• 

Xow, in this the old Homoousian leaven from Nice most 
prominently obtrudes itself, its idea being that the ' ' unity 
of the nature" saves everything, because within that 
unity there may be included any number whatever of 
separate, individual, and mutually equal deities, and the 
whole be denominated in the aggregate, One God. On 
the other hand, the Jews of all time have believed, and do 



144 T0 THE Jews. 

still believe, that the unity of God spoken of in the Old 
Testament means a unity or individuality of person, which 
comprehends a unity of nature, and that nature the sole 
property of the aforesaid one person without any partici- 
pant in the whole universe. This undoubtedly correct 
view is sustained by the New Testament with a directness 
and particularity which will resist all Athanasian efforts to 
upset. If Moses drove the truth concerning the Divine 
unity into the minds and consciences of men, Christ 
clinched it fast forever. 

Collate Deuteronomy 6: 4 to 9 with Mark's Gospel 12: 2& 
to 34, and see how powerfully Christ confirms and enforces 
the Divine unity and vindicates the Jewish conception of 
it. In John 17: 3 he particularizes the Father as "the 
only true God," (thus excluding himself from deity), and in 
his interview with the woman of Samaria, in John, chapter 
4, confines "true worship" to the worship of the Father, 
a "worship which the Father seeks." In that true wor- 
ship Christ comprehended his own. It was no blind and 
pointless service like that of the Samaritans, but an in- 
telligent devotion. "We know" said Christ "what we 
worship, for salvation is of the Jews." Surely no testi- 
mony could be clearer, more definite or more conclusive. 
To his disciples a little before his departure from the 
earth he gave the information : "I ascend unto my Father 
and your Father, and to my God and your God. ' ' To the 
same effect his inspired Apostles spoke and wrote. The 
Acts of the Apostles is a strictly unitarian compilation 
throughout, and their epistles are all of the same tenor. 

May we not, then, allowably ask if the New Testament 
is thus confirmatory of the great Jewish doctrine of the 
unity of God in one person, is not the New Testament 
entitled to Jewish goodwill and confidence ? That book is 
no Trinitarian advocate, teaching for "doctrines the com- 
mandments of men," but a veritable continuation and 
completion as well as expositor of the Old Testament. It 
pointedly defines, and leaves no opportunity for sophisms 
and man-made mysteries. The Jew that turns his back 
upon that volume turns his back upon his inestimable 
friend. 

After the glorious reigns of David and Solomon, the 
close of the latter of which was darkly clouded by the 
polygamous idolatry of one of the wisest of men, the 
Hebrew kingdom was divided. Ten tribes revolted and 
went off under Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with Samaria for 
their capital. The single tribe of Judah continued under 



TO THE JEWS. 145 

the rule of Solomon ; and, after him, his son Rehoboam, 
with Jerusalem for its capital. This split in the kingdom 
whose strength had consisted in its unity, inevitably led 
to the gradual decadence of the whole. Idolatry was the 
worm at the root. Severed into unfriendly fragments, the 
two peoples of Israel and Judah were successively carried 
away into captivity by Nineveh and Babylon. Seventy 
years of captivity in Babylon thoroughly cured the Jews 
of Jerusalem of their idolatry, and a number of them were 
allowed to return and rebuild their dismantled city. After 
numerous vicissitudes of fortune which it is not our pur- 
pose to enumerate, the whole country of Judea became, 
under the conquest of Cneius Pompey, a Roman province. 
Mark Antony, a member of the second Roman Triumvi- 
rate, granted to Herod of Idumea, or Southern Palestine, 
permission to assume the title of king of Judea. Herod, 
though naturally a tryant, repaired Jerusalem, partially 
rebuilt the temple, and was in other respects not un- 
friendly to the Jews. It was in his reign that Jesus of 
Nazareth, subsequently regarded as the Messiah, or Christ, 
was born. An expectation had been entertained and was 
about this time very rife in all the more civilized parts of the 
earth, that an extraordinary personage was about to appear, 
who should bring unwonted blessings to the human race. 
This personage seemed thus to be the "desire of all 
nations,'' of whom the prophet Haggai had said, more 
than five hundred years before, that he ' ' should come. ' ' 
The remarkable predictive allusion of the Latin poet Vir- 
gil to such a visitant is also well known. Amongst the 
Jews this anticipation took the shape of a mighty deliver- 
ance from the galling Roman yoke, and so sanguine were 
the people, that, to use a modern term, they "discounted" 
their expected prosperity and became exceedingly elate 
and presumptuous, often going into sedition and revolts 
which the Romans invariably and sternly quelled. 

On arriving at the age of mature manhood, Jesus of Naz- 
areth proclaimed to the people of the district of Galilee, in 
which Nazareth was situated, that he had received a Divine 
commission, adopting as a text, on a leading occasion in the 
synagogue atNaaareth, a passage from the sixty -first chapter 
of the book of the prophet Isaiah, which well befitted the 
circumstances. 

After his perusal of this passage of scripture, Jesus dis- 
closed to his hearers, in language of his own, the gracious 
purposes of heaven in his mission. The record states that 
all who heard him ' ' bare witness, and wondered at the 



146 TO THE JEWS. 

gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, " y thus 
closely agreeing with the testimony of another witness: 
" The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came 
by Jesus Christ." The law, with its mandates and pen- 
alties, but Christ with a message of unpurchased mercy 
and spiritual enlightenment to the poor and the penitent. 
Yet how soon and how totally did those hearers forget his 
tender announcements, when, because he had simply re- 
minded them of the ways of God in the times of Elijah and 
Elisha, they surged with animosity and took instant means 
to destroy him! How are grace and truth blended in this 
first introduction of Jesus to the world ! — the kindest de- 
signs of heaven with faithful notice of duty to man. Could 
there be a surer token of a heavenly mission ? And was 
not such a mission most loudly called for amongst a people 
who could rush from the worship of the synagogue to the 
sudden perpetration of atrocious murder? 

Conformably to this beginning were Christ's life and con- 
duct throughout his entire messiahship. He went about 
doing good to the bodies and souls of men. Can Judaism 
bear no cordially-approving testimony to such an example 
as this ? And if not, why not ? Where can Jews or any- 
body else find one so faultless and so gracious as this same 
Jesus of Nazareth — one, be it not forgotten, of their own 
people, and a descendant of their proudest prophet and 
king ? Whence the silence of the Jews of modern times 
on this subject? Do they not believe the narrative? Then 
let them furnish some rational and intelligible account of 
the way in which such a fictitious history was invented, 
and whose were the more than wonderful yet fraudulent 
minds that devised so unbroken a stream of spotless good- 
ness and truth. It is not a case for silence. Ignorement 
has no place here. Either acknowledge the superhuman 
excellence or give reasonable evidence that the whole 
Christian story is a cunningly-devised fable. The Jews 
lose no little by shutting out the light of Christ. 

In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy we find it 
written, ' ' The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a 
prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto 
me (that is, Moses); unto him shall ye hearken; according 
to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb in 
the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the 
voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire 
any more, that I die not. And Jehovah said unto me, they 
have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise 
them up a Prophet from among their brethren like unto 



TO THE JEWS. 147 

thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall 
speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it 
shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto 
my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require 
it of him." 

It is not to be supposed that any thoughtful and serious 
Jew, who wishes neither to deceive nor be deceived, will 
carelessly pass by this very important passage, or set lightly 
by its prophetic and admonitory instructions. Xone of us, 
Jew or Gentile, can afford to slight it. The motive to its 
promulgation was to supply a far milder method of com- 
municating the Divine will than that which took place in 
Horeb on the day of the assembly — a method that would 
inspire less terror, yet not be a whit less obligatory. The 
words of God, spoken by the tongue of an authorized man, 
are fully as binding on the conscience and conduct as the 
Divine commands from the midst of blackness and dark- 
ness and tempest. The one only inquiry is, Are they com- 
mands of God ? 

When God approved the natural suggestion of the Israel- 
itish people, as we see it in Exodus 20: 19, that not God in 
His own awful person, but that Moses should speak to 
them, then was instituted the Mediatorial system. Moses 
became — through the popular desire, confirmed by the 
Divine approval — the mediator between God and His 
chosen people. Such a mediator, also, was that future 
prophet to be — one that could hold communication with 
God and man. He must be a Hebrew by nation. Like 
Moses, he was to be a chief, a guide, a leader of his people. 
Like Moses, it was his great work to lead them out from 
the oppressions and corruptions of their previous condition 
and circumstances to the pure worship and service of God; 
and, like Moses, he was to conduct them through the 
waters of separation, by a life of faith, through a worldly 
wilderness to the promised Canaan of security, peace, and 
unassailable happiness. 

Can we identify any personage in all history from Moses 
downward to the age of Herod that will fill the programme? 
As we have already intimated, no personage that could be 
acknowledged such had as yet appeared. Down to that the 
Desire-of-all-nations had not yet come. But in the reign 
of Herod an obscure and lowly birth took place in Bethle- 
hem of Judea, from which in due time there matured a 
manhood wiser in words, greater in deeds and loftier in 
aspiration than had ever been seen before or since. The 
keen outlook of the expectant people was met by an object 



148 TO THE JEWS. 

that fulfilled and more than fulfilled the popular hopes. 
How unspeakably joyous was that announcement by Philip 
to Nathanael, "We have found him of whom Moses in the 
law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth." That 
was a discovery indeed, filling their souls with unwonted 
views and anticipations. Then said the guileless Xathanael 
to Jesus in just acknowledgment, "Rabbi, thou art the 
Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.' ' Thus early was 
Jesus announced Son of God and Son of man. He was 
Son of God far more truly than Adam, for Jesus was not 
formed out of the dust of the ground but was the imme- 
diate offspring of the Divine Spirit. He was also Son of 
man, being the seed of the woman. Thus Jesus was neither 
God on the one hand nor a common "mere man" on the 
other. He was the first and head of the new creation, 
always designed to be the future and final inheritors of this 
sublunary globe. Hence Jesus comes to be called the "last 
Adam;" the progenitor of a new race of men who arise by 
that second birth ' ' of water and the Spirit. ' ' He will know 
and acknowledge those who are truly his children when 
they shall come forth from the dead, raised by him through 
the power lodged in his hands by the Everlasting Father. 
The regenerated earth will be the true Canaan ; and Christ, 
under God, its perpetual king. How comes it that some, 
if not many, of the Nathanaels among the Jewish people 
of the present day do not have the moral intuitions and 
spiritual insight of the Nathanael of old? Their oppor- 
tunities are and always have been superior to his. Christ's 
career had hardly then begun ; the Jews of this age can 
know his whole existence. If Jesus Christ be not the 
prophet predicted in the 18th Deuteronomy, then God has 
delayed the blessed fulfilment considerably more than three 
thousand years. He has let pass not only that great ex- 
tension of time without the expected fruitage, but has per- 
mitted the Hebrew state to melt away; its people to be 
driven from Palestine and scattered throughout the whole 
earth ; their whole religious establishment of priesthood, 
sacrifices and temple worship to be obliterated, and all 
without giving the smallest indication that they will ever 
be restored. Has God failed of His purpose and His prom- 
ise? Has His arm been shortened? Has He forgotten to 
be gracious? It might very well look so if the real Prophet 
has never been vouchsafed to us. 

We now leave Deuteronomy and open the book of Psalms, 
the glorious contribution of the prophet-king David. Early 
in it, the 2d chapter, we read of the Lord Jehovah and His 



TO THE JEWS. 149 

Anointed, His Messiah. The Messiah, speaking by the 
pen of David, says, "I will declare the decree; Jehovah 
hath said unto me, Thou art my Son ; this day have I be- 
gotten thee. Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen 
for thine inheritance (mark that word ' inheritance') and 
the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Kiss 
the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the way when 
his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that 
put their trust in him." 

Again, in the 45th Psalm, we read of a " King that is 
fairer than the children of men, whom God hath blessed 
forever. ' ' He is addressed as sitting upon a ' ' throne which 
is for ever and ever ; whose sceptre is a right sceptre, and 
who, because he loveth righteousness and hateth wicked- 
ness, hath been anointed by God, his God, above his 
fellows. ' ' 

In the ninth chapter of the prophet Isaiah, which I shall 
take from the translation of the Episcopal Bishop Robert 
Lowth, we read, "For unto us a child is born; unto us a son 
is given ; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, 
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the 
Mighty God, the Father of the everlasting age, the Prince 
of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace 
there shall be no end. Upon the throne of David and upon 
his kingdom, to fix it and to establish it with judgment and 
with justice henceforth and forever ; the zeal of Jehovah, 
God of Hosts, will do this. ' ' 

The book of the prophet Isaiah is copiously supplied 
with chapters containing allusions of great significance. 
We would call particular attention to what is said in the 
nth chapter relative to the stem of Jesse and the Branch 
out of his roots; to the 42d and 53d chapters, and to the 
61st. The 13th of Zechariah is also very noteworthy as 
predictive of great events, and will repay serious and 
prayerful study. The last Old Testament allusion we shall 
refer to on this head is from the 5th chapter of the prophecy 
of Micah, but it is very pointed, and would seem little or 
nothing less than conclusive. In verse 2d we read: "But 
thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among 
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth 
unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth 
have been from old, from everlasting." In the 4th verse: 
"And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, 
in the majesty of the name of the Lord, his God ; and they 
shall abide, for now shall he be great unto the ends of the 
earth." 



150 TO THE JEWS. 

Who the learned Rabbi Isaac Leeser was is probably 
well known to many present. He was outspoken, and 
continued in the Jewish faith to the close of his days. In 
a statement of Jewish doctrine, which he caused to be 
published, he says: "The Messiah whom we expect is not 
to be a god, nor a part of the godhead, nor a Son of God 
in any sense of the word ; but simply a man eminently 
endowed like Moses and the prophets in the days of the 
Bible, to work out the will of God on earth in all that the 
prophets have predicted of him. His coming, we believe, 
will be the signal for universal peace, universal freedom, 
universal knowledge, universal worship of the One Eternal ; 
objects all of high import, and well worthy to be attested 
by the visible display of the Divine glory before the eyes 
of all flesh, just as was the presence of the Lord manifested 
at Sinai when the Israelites stood assembled to receive the 
law which was surrendered to their keeping. In the days 
of this august ruler the law, which was at first given as 
" an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob," will become 
the only standard of righteousness, of salvation for all 
mankind, when will be fulfilled to its fullest extent the 
blessings conferred upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that 
" in their seed all the families of the earth should be 
blessed." 

Now, in this statement Mr. Leeser antagonizes the Son- 
ship of Christ no less than his deity. That Christ is " not 
a Son of God in any sense of the word " is his plain, un- 
mistakable declaration. This seems almost unaccountable 
when we reflect how distinct are the references to Christ, 
especially in the writings of David and Isaiah. In the 2d 
Psalm God is represented as saying, ' ' Thou art my Son ; 
this day have I begotten thee ; ' ' and by Isaiah in his 9th 
chapter, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given," 
with numerous epithets and titles of extremely high dis- 
tinction and glory, yet all due to the superintending " zeal 
of Jehovah, God of Hosts." 

Elsewhere in his statement Mr. Leeser says, "We do 
indeed totally reject the idea of a Mediator either past or 
to come," yet that was precisely the office filled by Moses 
as between God and man, and it was for the exercise of his 
mediatorship, or interposition, that the terrified people of 
Israel so earnestly prayed. (Exod., 20: 19.) 

Yet more painful is it to read Mr. Leeser when he says, 
"We reject him whom the Christians call their Messiah," 
as if the testimony to the anointing or messiahship of Jesus 
in the Old Testament were not to be accounted for. Again, 



TO THE JEWS. 151 

we are the very reverse of agreeably surprised when Mr. 
Leeser declares his belief that ' ' no mediator and no ema- 
nation from the Creator is conceivable. ' ' Here he excludes 
from the possibility of existence not only Christ but God's 
own Holy Spirit! Some mitigation of one's regret arises 
from his saying that neither a mediator nor a spirit pro- 
ceeding from God the Father is " conceivable. ' ' This, 
then, is a matter for which Mr. Leeser's own mind, and 
not the Old Testament, is responsible. When Mr. Leeser, 
or any Jew, or Athanasian, or anybody else, takes to dog- 
matizing about the faculties in God, it is time to look out 
for mistakes and blunders. Very soon, indeed, in the 
book of Genesis do we meet with an announcement that 
there is a " Spirit of God, ' ' for it is no further on than in 
the 2d verse of the 1st chapter, where Moses tells us that 
in the creation ' ' the Spirit of God moved upon the face of 
the waters." In the 6th chapter of Genesis, verse 3, 
Jehovah said, ' ' My Spirit shall not alwa}'s strive with 
man." And what was the prayer of Moses when, in 
Numbers, 11:29, ne sa ^ to Joshua, "Would to God that 
all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord 
would put His Spirit upon them. ' ' Would not this be an 
"emanation"? In Isaiah, 42:1, does not God say that 
He has put His Spirit upon His servant ? In Isaiah, 43: 8, 
God promises to ' ' pour His Spirit upon the seed of Jacob 
and His blessing upon his offspring. " See also Ezekiel, 
36: 27 and 37: 14 ; but there is no necessity for multiplying 
proofs in a case so palpable and plain. The Old Testament 
is far from coinciding with Mr. Leeser's strange idea on 
this subject. His idea is far below what the Bible teaches 
concerning the nature of the Most High. 

We return to a consideration of the first quotation made. 
Mr. Leeser believes that the ' ' coming of the Jewish Messiah 
will be the signal for universal peace, universal freedom, 
universal knowledge, universal worship of the One Eter- 
nal, ' ' &c. , &c. But really, now, does not this seem some- 
thing more fanatical than one would have expected from a 
collected and cool-minded Jew ? Does it not seem to imply 
that God will violently interfere by the exercise of sheer 
omnipotence to suddenly produce those great effects ? Is 
that God's method of procedure with His moral offspring? 
It might be very great and glorious things to do, but it 
implies a method too merely mechanical for application to 
such beings as we are. Even if all those purposes were 
once secured, what evidence is there that the new Para- 
dise, or second Eden, would not become, sooner or later, 



152 TO THE JEWS. 

as unfortunate as the first Eden, by the introduction of 
disobedience and sin ? Are we also to suppose that the 
Divine power, or the power of the Messiah, would interfere 
to prevent sinning ? If so, mankind would be no longer 
moral beings, but the slaves of an irresistible omnipotence. 
That would be a inarch backward. 

We are furthermore told by Mr. Leeser that the great 
and blessed things herein described are to take place ' ' on 
earth." And the same is taught by the Jewish Karaites, 
or scripturists, a class claiming to keep more closely to the 
Bible than the generality of the Jews, who mix with the 
precepts of the Mosaic or written law the traditions of the 
Mishnaand Gemara in the Talmud. It is true that a "re- 
generation " of the earth is spoken of, after which only will 
those good things take place, but we are left to conclude 
that none but they who are found upon the earth at the 
time of the "regeneration" will enjoy them, and that the 
millions who will have previously died can have no part or 
lot therein. The date of this "regeneration " is quite in- 
definite, and may be "thousands of years" yet to come. 

This arrangement is certainly a hard one upon the scores 
if not hundreds of millions of Jews, including those now 
living with all that shall have died previous to the great 
change, and who will be just as deserving, though much 
less fortunate, than those others. For those others will be 
made peaceable, free, wise and pious by the irresistible fiat 
of the Almighty. They must be good and right whether 
they will or no. Nothing is said of what shall become of 
those on the earth at the time of the regeneration, — whether 
they will ever die, or will continue immortal. In the case 
of their death, nothing is said about their fate after death. 
Equally silent is the recital about the further propagation 
of the race, intermarriages, &c. Much of it seems to be 
quite conjectural. 

Again it is said by Mr. Leeser that the old law as pro- 
mulgated at Sinai, and that only, will be the law and 
standard of the future; whence the world will necessarily 
take a start backward for a restoration of the prospects and 
ideas that over three thousand years ago ruled the minds 
and animated the hearts of the immediate descendants of 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is not definitely stated 
whether the "law" that is thus to rule will include the 
sacrificial and ceremonial as well as the moral law, but 
from the observation that it is to be "the law which was 
at first given," all the forms are included. And this is 



TO THE JEWS. 153 

■confirmed by statements in other parts of Mr. Leeser's 
exposition. 

Now about all this it is obvious to remark — and we do it 
reverently — that if God be the patron of those things, He 
seems to have left Himself not much scope for direction 
.and command to the coming prophet. The past supplies 
substantially all that the future can need. If the old law 
and the old covenant, of which the law was a part, are to 
be the everlasting standard and rule, it will be of interest 
to know what the Prophet Jeremiah could have meant in 
his 31st chapter and 31st verse, when he reports Jehovah as 
promising a new covenant, not like the old one established 
at the exodus from Egypt, at Sinai, &c. The establish- 
ment of a new covenant involves essentially an abrogation 
■of the old. Are not .Jeremiah and Mr. Leeser, therefore, 
at decided odds on this subject? So, indeed, it would 
seem. 

There is another point in which some considerable dis- 
crepancy is involved between what the Israelites of old 
thought and felt, and what Mr. Leeser opines relative to a 
" display of the Divine glory before the eyes of all flesh," 
such as that ' ' manifested at Sinai. ' ' They saw it, but did 
not wish a repetition of the sight. Mr. L. , on the other 
hand, exults in the prospect of this ' ' visible display ' ' 
"being enacted over again. Inasmuch, however, as neither 
Jehovah nor the Israelitish people favored another instance 
of that display, it is not likely to be ever repeated. See 
Exod., 20:19, and Deut, 18: 16 and 17. 

Whilst our author for himself, and as coinciding with the 
great Moses Ben Maimon, or Maimonides, called the "lamp 
of Israel," acknowledges a future King Messiah and a 
resurrection of the dead, he keeps the ideas of both so 
■distinct and apparently independent as vastly to weaken 
their effect. Thus the Messiah's field of operation is to be 
"the world and the people of Israel" — nothing connecting 
him with the resurrected mass of mankind. The light shed 
by the prophet Isaiah, especially in that passage which we 
have quoted from his ninth chapter, is not availed of but 
evaded, and therefore made unprofitable. Our Jewish 
friends sometimes belittle and nullify the very scriptures 
in which they profess to confide. 

It must be regarded as a surprising fact that trie Jewish 
people, notwithstanding all their bitter experience, do not 
candidly enough consider the teachings of their own prophets 
as they are spread forth in the Old Testament. Take, for 
instance, the concluding half-dozen verses of the ninth 



154 TO TH E JEWS. 

chapter of the book of Daniel. The mention, as by the 
month of the angel Gabriel, of so many weeks, each week 
obviously representing seven years, lends a precision to the 
prediction of the events to which they refer wholly unlike 
the almost wild indefiniteness of such writings as those of 
the honest Iyeeser. The allusion to "finishing the trans- 
gression, (of the race), to making an end of sins and a recon- 
ciliation for iniquity, to bringing in everlasting righteous- 
ness, to sealing up the vision and prophecy and anointing 
the Most Holy," is matter of the profoundest interest to us 
all, no matter who or what we are. The rest is as much 
history as prophecy, as those who have some knowledge of 
the awful sufferings of Jerusalem and her inhabitants will, 
not dispute. In the same serious spirit we earnestly com- 
mend a careful attention to the last chapter of the book so 
closely in keeping with the Christian scriptures. It is of an 
apocalyptic character, and cannot but produce a salutary 
impression upon every unprejudiced mind. 

We have now gathered very pertinent testimony from 
Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Micah, 
Haggai, and Zechariah, and might have added Malachi — 
sufficient to make good the genuineness of the New Testa- 
ment as an inseparable constituent of the Word of God. 
Each Testament is interlocked with the other, yielding 
mutual support. Both can point to the general history of 
mankind for proof of their title to our reliance, for the 
great facts of both are incontestable. 

The Christian world, whatever their differences on other 
subjects, regard Jesus of Nazareth as their spiritual prophet, 
priest, and king, both for the present life and the boundless 
existence that is to follow it. That Jesus was and is such 
a priest, David taught when he declared God's appointment 
of him in the words, "Jehovah sware and will not repent, 
Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. " 
That he is and will be a king to the whole human family 
we have already seen from his institution by God to a rule 
extending to the uttermost parts of the earth. That he is 
the veritable prophet of whom Moses spoke may be shown 
from his miraculously precise predictions of the destruction 
of Jerusalem and the temple within it; of the prodigies that 
preceded and attended that destruction; of the unparalleled 
sufferings and miseries of the Jewish people during the siege 
of their capital ; of the dispersion of the comparatively few 
remnants; their present scattered condition throughout the 
earth, and their future restoration, which they and we take 
for fact. 



TO THE JEWS. 155 

Before we come to pen our last paragraphs, we will offer a 
summing-up of the case of the Jewish people, as presented 
by a man of genuine learning who lived in the eighteenth 
century. We commend it to the sedate and candid con- 
sideration of all concerned. He says as follows, in com- 
menting on a portion of scripture in Matthew 21 : 42 : 

" ' Did ye never read in the scriptures (Psalm 118: 22) The 
stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the 
head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvel- 
lous in our eyes? Therefore (saith Christ) I say unto you, 
The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to 
a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof: and whosoever 
shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomso- 
ever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. ' 

1 ' The kingdom of God, as may be collected from what is 
thus said, denotes the spiritual or moral dominion of God 
over moral subjects, that is, free agents, and by the people 
of God are signified such free agents as freely and volun- 
tarily acknowledge the sovereignly- of God by worshipping 
Him, and receiving and obeying all those laws, whether 
natural or revealed, which appear to have been enacted by 
Him. The Jews, therefore, by rejecting Jesus Christ, who 
proved himself to have been commissioned and sent by God, 
not only from the testimony of Moses and all their prophets, 
the holiness of his life and doctrine, and the numberless 
miracles he wrought among them, but still more plainly, if 
possible, by his rising from the dead, and empowering his 
disciples to work the same mighty signs and wonders in 
his name, — the Jews, I say, by rejecting this messenger, 
this Son of God, and refusing to receive the laws which 
he proposed to them in his Father's name, evidently re- 
nounced their allegiance to God, and ceased to be his people 
or subjects. And the Gentiles, on the other hand, by re- 
nouncing their vices and idolatrous superstitions, returning 
to the worship of God, and receiving His Messiah, together 
with the laws proposed to them by him in the name of God, 
as evidently put themselves under the dominion of God, 
acknowledged his empire, and became the people or sub- 
jects of God. And hence appears what is meant by the 
kingdom of God being taken from the Jews and given 
to the Gentiles. God removed the throne whereon David 
and his posterity had sat as his substitutes and viceroys, 
from among the Jews who had renounced his authority, 
and from earth to heaven ; and placing it at his right 
hand, and setting upon it His Messiah, his only Son, gave 
him for his subjects, not one nation only, but all nations 



T56 TO THE JEWS. 

and kindreds and people, and all the ends of the earth for 
his dominion. That the kingdom of God was in this sense 
and in this manner actually transferred from the Jews to 
the Gentiles, is too notorious to need any proof. The 
Jews as a nation rejected the gospel, and persisted in 
their refusal of the Messiah until the final destruction of 
their holy city and temple ; and what is yet more strange, 
still persevere in their obstinacy. Whereas the Gentiles 
embraced it so universally, that within a few centuries 
after Christ, almost the whole Roman empire — that is, 
almost all the then known world — forsook idolatry and 
became Christian. And God, on His part, testified that 
He entered into covenant with them and accepted their 
allegiance by pouring upon them the gifts of His Holy 
Spirit ; as He signified on the other hand, His renunciation 
of the Mosaical covenant by not only suffering the seat of 
His empire, the city and temple of Jerusalem, to be utterly 
destroyed, but permitting the Jews also to be banished 
from the holy land, and scattered through all the nations 
of the earth. And thus was this prophecy most exactly 
accomplished in all its parts." 

Now, those of us who believe in God — and I trust that 
is the case with us all — will acknowledge that God sym- 
pathizes with His creatures, and especially in their aspira- 
tions after another life. He commissioned Moses, and put 
His law into his mouth and into his hands, but that law 
said nothing of another life. Was not that great matter 
left to the Prophet like unto Moses of whom the Jewish 
lawgiver spoke in the 18th Deuteronomy ? At least, it can- 
not be said to be unlikely. And, if so, the Prophet who 
should speak of another life, and, it may be, an endless life, 
would be much the greater prophet of the two — greater, 
as the interminable future is greater than the fleeting 
present. 

God, having withholden in His old law any revelation, 
save a few suggestions, respecting a life to come, plainly 
designed a new law in which such a revelation should be 
made, and made in that clear, complete, and practical way 
which characterizes all the works of God. Common sense 
dictates that the very best w T ay to demonstrate that man 
can live again after death, would be to bring to life a 
man who is known to have died. And this practical, com- 
mon-sense method God adopted in the case of Jesus of 
Nazareth, who was known to have been put to death in a 
most public manner on Calvary, near the populous city of 
Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth rose again from his tomb 



TO THE JEWS. 157 

within three days after being buried. In his resurrected 
state he was seen, heard, talked with, personally examined 
and handled, partook of food and drink, and gave all pos- 
sible evidence of his resurrection. That his body had gone 
from the sepulchre, which had been closed and guarded 
with jealous and perhaps unexampled precaution, was be- 
yond question ; else his dead body would have been exposed 
by the Jewish rulers to the public gaze in disproof of the 
allegations of his disciples and friends. At all events the 
huge boulder lodged at the entrance of the sepulchre had 
been displaced, the tomb forsaken, and the once-crucified 
body never again seen by his executioners. 

Following this, Almighty God confirmed the promise 
He had made to Jesus by conferring miraculous powers on 
his apostles ; by pouring out upon them in a visible man- 
ner the gift of the Holy Spirit, and by such aids in their 
efforts at teaching the new religion as should be irresistibly 
convincing. 

Thus we sketch the outline of the establishment of the 
Christian faith, which showed its divine origin and au- 
thority just as were shown the divine origin and authority 
of the Mosaic system. Each was attested by signs and. 
wonders from on high. 

With respect to the interior doctrines of the religion, the 
first thing to be taught is that the future life of men, if to 
be happy, must be the result of a special preparation for it. 
The preparation, or the education, must take place here; 
in this world. It must consist in making the concerns of 
the future life the ruling motives of the heart, so that when 
any conflict shall appear to take place between the calls 
and the interests of the present and of the future, the future 
must prevail. The turning point between living for this 
world and living for the next is signalized by an external 
ceremony called ' ' baptism, ' ' by which are signified the 
washing away of the existing pollutions and sins of the soul 
and the commencement of a new and pure life, after the 
model presented in the life of Christ. This ceremony of 
passing through the waters of separation is therefore some- 
times called a baptism into Christ, having an effect parallel 
to that which passed upon every child of Israel when they 
crossed the Red Sea, and, having left behind them the 
carnality and pollutions of Egypt, followed the lead of 
Moses under the superintending care of God. They were, 
therefore, said to be " baptized unto Moses. ' ' 

To the Christian, Christ stands in the same relation that 
Moses did to the Israelites. Christ is the great Christian 



158 TO THE JEWS. 

lawgiver, though he largely adopts the Mosaic code, espe- 
cially the moral part of it, and makes it his own. Christ, 
like Moses, conducts his followers towards the coveted 
Canaan; but Christ's Canaan is beyond the grave, in the 
peace and perpetuity of heaven. The Christian, like the 
Jew of old, is provided with all the necessary appliances of 
a priesthood and of sacrifice, but they are not, like the 
Jew's, transitory. They are perpetual, with intercessory 
agencies that never cease. Moses failed as a leader, for he 
was not permitted to enter the promised land. Another, 
of the same prenomen as Christ's, was required to complete 
the task. Not so with Jesus, who through the most pain- 
ful and appalling circumstances, forced his way into the 
heavenly Canaan for himself and for his people, where he 
now sitteth, not as God, but at God's right hand. 

Having said thus much, we will not longer trespass upon 
your patience and your time, but commend you most 
especially to that unequalled letter to the Hebrews by the 
Hebrew disciple of the Hebrew Gamaliel, where all the 
principles and analogies of the Mosaic and Christian sys- 
tems are unfolded and explained to the fullest of every sin- 
cere inquirer's most fervid desire. We close with the 
single remark that the study and experience of a life have 
tended to prove irrefragably one thing, viz., that the true 
religion for man, and for all men without exception, con- 
sists of a Mosaic pedestal reaching down to the centre, 
crowned with a Christian capital penetrating the skies. 



[The foregoing, "To the Jews," was written with a view 
to repeating it before a Hebrew congregation, but circum- 
stances did not favor the design. The minister was un- 
willing that his people should hear it, though he expressed 
a willingness for a private discussion. The manuscript of 
the foregoing was then placed in his hands, and on its 
return was accompanied by a courteous note claiming for 
the Jews the great advantage of having " the original He- 
brew text of the Bible" for the source of their information 
"instead of in many respects a faulty translation" — the 
original text causing those sentences of the Bible covering 
the field of controversy to " appear in an entirely different 
light, while our Christian friends persistently misunder- 
stand and misinterpret the same. ' ' The reverend gentle- 
man thoughtfully suggested that "before seeking to lec- 
ture to Jews, and to imply wilful obstinacy on their part 
in shutting their eyes to the light of the gospel, careful 



TO THE JEWS. 159 

inquiry should be made whether the accusation is well 
founded." He also said, " Our rejection of the New Tes- 
tament must not be traced to obstinacy, but rather to the 
same motive which undoubtedly actuated the writer of the 
lecture in accepting it, viz. , a love of truth. ' ' Speaking of 
the late Rabbi Leeser, he said that his ' ' religious views 
represented in his days — and certainly in our own — those 
of but a small minority of his Jewish fellow-citizens. Since 
his death quite a number of books have been published 
in the (English) vernacular, which, had they been known 
and read beforehand, would probably have caused the writer 
to desist from preparing his lecture. Had, for instance, 
there been read " The Martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth," 
by Dr. I. M. Wise, the writer would have been obliged to 
admit that the Jews indeed are studying the New Testa- 
ment, but fail to see in it any truth that did not appear to 
them in the light of their own scriptures, while they cannot 
shut their eyes to its numerous contradictions and imper- 
fections. ' ' He remarked : ' ' In conclusion, let me assure you 
that the Jew does hardly require a helping hand in his 
search after truth; and that he always did and always will 
find that solace, consolation, and good cheer in his religious 
teachings which will tend to establish and secure his hap- 
piness here and hereafter. ' ' 

A few days after the receipt of this note from the minis- 
ter, the following was addressed to him in response : 

"Rev. A. B. 

' ' Dear Sir : Profiting by your suggestion I procured a . 
copy of Dr. Isaac M. Wise's 'Martyrdom of Jesus of Naza- 
reth,' and have given it a pretty thorough perusal. The 
very most striking of the numerous remarkable things it 
contains is the doctor's modesty in claiming that a book 
he has ' systematically compiled ' from the Old Testament 
is ' a better book ' than the New Testament, and that he 
has ' a perfect right to expect all readers ' to acknowledge 
this. The doctor seems to forget what others might possi- 
bly recollect, that God promised that ' the days should come 
when he would make a new covenant with the house of 
Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the 
covenant that He made with their fathers when He took 
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. ' 
This looks very much as if God designed to supersede the 
old law by the new, for there was to be a day when the 
'sceptre should depart from Judah,' and when *" another 
prophet should be raised up like unto Moses, ' who should 



160 TO THE JEWS. 

lead the people out of the land of oppression and darkness 
into a land of freedom and light. Therefore it is that the 
doctor's proclivities to retreat upon the plans and policies 
of 3,400 years ago are neither conformable to the expressed 
will of God nor coincident with the reasonable feelings and 
aspirations of mankind in this practical age of the world. 
Onward, and not backward, is the motto. The Old Testa- 
ment deals but sparingly with the things of the life to come 
which is so close to us all ; the New Testament is freighted 
with the things that belong to man's everlasting peace. 

Another noticeable point is Dr. Wise's consideration 
that the gospel of the Evangelist Mark was the first gospel 
that was written, and that so late as between A. D. 120 and 
170, or from fifty to one hundred years after the destruction 
of Jerusalem by Titus, and after the times of the executions 
of Paul and Peter, who respectively aided in the compila- 
tion of the gospels of Luke and Mark. The doctor has 
left his motive for this singular metachronism a good deal 
exposed, it being no less than the endeavor to discredit 
Christ's power of prophecy and to stigmatize the second 
synoptic gospel by identifying Mark, its Hebrew author, 
with one Marcus, who was permitted by the Roman Em- 
peror Hadrian (after A. D. 117) to exercise the office of 
bishop over the Christian church of ./Elia Capitolina, the 
new city founded by Hadrian on the razed site of Jeru- 
salem. Mark the Evangelist was undoubtedly a Jew, the 
son of Mary who lived in Jerusalem about the year 44, 
(Acts, 12: 12,) whilst Marcus, bishop of ^Elia Capitolina, was 
of the Gentile race, a Latin, and probably a native of Italy. 
Of course, then, Mark and Marcus belonged to different 
centuries. The oldest authorities, Papias, Irenseus, and the 
learned Origen agree in stating that the gospel by Matthew 
was the first penned; in large part from facts ascertained 
by Matthew during his experience as a disciple. It was 
written in Hebrew, or Syro-Chaldaic, for the use of Jewish 
Christians, and perhaps about a score of years afterwards 
was translated into Greek, constituting the Greek gospel 
now in our hands. Then the gospel of Mark was written 
down, probably for direct use in Peter's ministrations, 
Peter being personal authority for its statements. It was 
independently written, though by the similarity, or even 
identity, of much of what it says with the already promul- 
gated gospel of Matthew it gave confirmation thereto and 
established the genuineness of both. Thirdly, the com- 
position of Luke's gospel was undertaken with the counsel 
and co-operation of Paul; and lastly, John's gospel was. 



TO THE JEWS. l6l 

composed a few years before the termination of the first 
century, with the synoptics before him, which he supple- 
mented and made beyond appraisement from his own 
personal knowledge, his close intimacy with Christ, and 
profound spiritual experience. John outlived the other 
apostles and died about A. D. 101, aged one century. Dr. 
Wise says 'none of the gospels were written in the first 
century.' Contrariwise, the evidence is they were all 
written within it. 

The doctor betrays a manifest craving to put the fact 
of Christ's crucifixion in doubt. He suggests that Christ 
might have been hanged only ; or possibly, not executed 
at all. He insists throughout his book that it was Roman 
and not Jewish policy that put Jesus to death, and that 
the Roman military power terrorized or corrupted a dozen 
or two of the Jewish priesthood, including Caiaphas the 
high priest and some scribes, to aid them in the commission 
of the crime, and at a time when the mass of the Jewish 
people were away on Mount Moriah engaged in religious 
exercises. He intimates that it was a comparatively small 
Jewish mob which cried ' Crucify him ; crucify him ; re- 
lease unto us Barabbas ; ' and to Pilate, ' if thou let this 
man go thou are not Csesar's friend.' He makes no effort 
to account for the intention to precipitate Jesus down the 
steep on the occasion of that gracious first sermon at Naza- 
reth, nor to apologize for the flagitious scheme of the priest- 
hood to put to death both Jesus and Lazarus, whom Jesus 
had raised from the grave, nor the many other such like 
purposes of violence and cruelty. In covering those wrongs 
he almost inculpates himself. 

The doctor makes Christ the voluntary cause of his 
own immolation out of a generous desire to save thereby 
the lives of his immediate disciples and friends and a por- 
tion of the Jewish people who were urging him to set up 
for king, which Christ well knew if attempted would bring 
down certain destruction on them all. Seeing this, Christ 
concluded to die out of the way and thus put a stop to the 
whole design. The doctor thinks Christ acted meritori- 
ously in this matter to the extent of ' eliciting admiration, ' 
but no more. The benefits from his death extended to his 
disciples and friends above mentioned, but went no farther. 
They had no effect as regards the future life. In all this 
it did not seem to occur to the doctor to explain why Jesus 
did not seek to attain the purpose he ascribes to him by a 
simple suicide, and so avoid the unnecessary horrors of 
crucifixion. 



1 62 TO THE JEWS. 

The doctor discredits Christ's resurrection, and attrib- 
utes the report about it to Paul's ingenuity and authority. 
The belief in the ascension must, of course, go the same 
way. Touching such phraseology as ' Christianity is no re- 
ligion — a big bubble — a misfortune for weeping humanity — 
Jesus was not accused of saying or teaching anything 
original — all biographies of Jesus are works of fiction ' — &c. , 
Parcius ista viris tamen objicienda memento. Still, Christi- 
anity, disfavored by Jewish priestcraft and Roman pride 
and power, by philosophic conceit and heathen besotted- 
ness, managed to steer on against wind and tide till it 
rooted itself throughout the civilized and in some parts of 
the uncivilized world. The genuine touch of it changed 
the fierce and persecuting Saul into the meek and long- 
suffering Paul. Its effects were similar in numberless cases. 
As a model for precept and example, and of both combined, 
can the brightest intellect on the face of the earth conceive 
of a superior to Christ ; nay, of an equal ? If men claiming 
the honor of the Christian name have defaced and dis- 
honored the pure Christianity, what good institution that 
ever existed has not human proneness to wrong more or 
less abused or perverted ? 

The doctor , blames the eucharist as a most fruitful 
'cause of hatred, persecution, outrage, and bloodshed,' 
and says ' if the doctrine underlying this observance be 
religious, then the Hindoos' car of Juggernaut may justly 
be called a religious institution. ' Can there be any fair- 
ness and justice, to say nothing of decency and courtesy, 
in thus running a similitude between the memorial table 
of the supper instituted to perpetuate a recollection of 
Christ's self-sacrificing love, and the most inhuman and 
abominable development of Hindoo superstition ? Will 
the generality of the children of Israel approve so dishon- 
oring a comparison ? 

The doctor is very emphatic in his reprobation of the 
doctrine of Vicarious Atonement. It is true that no such 
word as ' vicarious ' is found in the Bible, and it is not 
unlikely that a good deal of extravagance and error might 
be held in connexion with it ; still there is a substratum 
of truth and soberness in the doctrine which no candid 
believer in either book of the Bible will undertake to 
deny. The Mosaical or Jewish religion was ushered into 
existence by the universal sacrifice in every Jewish house- 
hold of a blemishless lamb, by the display of the blood of 
which upon the lintel and door-posts of the house of the 
enclosed family they were saved from the visitation of the 






TO THE JEWS. 163 

destroying angel. Few, if any, of the departing Israelites 
were acquainted with the philosophy of the command ; 
they simply obeyed the order of Moses, and were saved. 
Their faith in God and in Moses saved them. They were 
saved by faith, which manifested itself in their work of 
obedience. They were saved by the vicarious or objective 
instrumentality of the lamb's blood, appointed for them 
by God, and evidenced by their actual protection. Why 
an offering of blood was selected might, perhaps, be ac- 
counted for by the fact that life, or its symbol and repre- 
sentative, blood, indicates the presence and supremacy of 
God ; for the production and sustainment of life, in every 
form of it — spiritual, animal, and vegetable — imply the 
presence and power of God. He is the Living God and 
the God of the living. When man first sinned, the penalty 
he paid was the return of his life to God, who only could 
produce it. The luxury of sinning must be paid for by 
the penalty of death. This idea is present in all the sacri- 
fices of the Mosaic institution. Now, the Christian insti- 
tution retains this idea, only it extends it, and makes the 
sacrifice not a continuous succession of petty sacrifices in 
one place only, but a universal sacrifice answering for all 
lands and all times, and the sacrifice not of brute beasts, 
but of the blood of a rational being, demanded by God as 
His inherent right, if He wills to call for it. If He so 
wills, man must obey, and obedience is shown both by and 
without sacrifice. All men die, for all men have sinned ; 
but in the resurrection those only will be preserved from 
the destroying angel who have been careful to be protected 
by the blood of that Lamb whom God has selected for the 
purpose — holy, harmless, and undefiled, and separate from 
sinners. Blood for sin. By paying blood, sin is remitted. 
(Leviticus, 17:11.) The only blood God will accept is 
pure, uncontaminated blood. There is no blood but 
Christ's that is uncontaminated. He is willing to accept 
that, of which each one of us can avail himself by baptism 
into Christ, by obedience to him as a lawgiver, and accept- 
ing his advocacy as our high-priest offering for us his own 
sacrificial blood. Therefore Christ, the Lamb of God, is 
the paschal lamb, the sin-offering, and the priest, all in 
one. Therefore vicarious atonement means an atonement 
which another offers on our behalf. If God will graciously 
accept it, so much the better for us. 

The doctor demurs to the prophecy of Daniel. Why ? 
Does Daniel drift too decidedly against the doctor's views? 

Omitting minor points too numerous to deal with, the 



164 TO THE JEWS. 

great flaw with Dr. Wise, as with Mr. Leeser, is the vague 
notion they have of the future after death, for Jews die as 
well as other people. This has a bad effect, in deadening 
their interest in divine things and making them satisfied 
either with trust in a few effete and exploded ceremonies, 
circumcision to wit, or casting them upon a cold, barren, 
deistical morality. It is in the nature of man to have 
hopes. If he will not take the hopes God offers, he will 
fabricate hopes of his own, however ill-founded. Thus 
Dr. Wise is happy in expatiating about a visionary ' gor- 
geous temple of humanity, one universal republic, one 
universal religion of intelligence, and one great universal 
brotherhood.' He keeps out of sight the indelible fact 
that subsequent to this ' gorgeousness ' there must follow 
death, burial, resurrection, judgment, and final sentence, 
one way or the other. The glory God has provided for 
the faithful beyond the grave Dr. Wise appears to have no 
taste for. 

By way of reciprocating your kindness, I respectfully 
suggest to you a perusal of the works of an author noted 
for 'knowledge, probity, charity, and meekness.' I mean 
Dr. Nathaniel Lardner, whose ' Credibility of the Gospel 
History ' and ' History of the Apostles and Evangelists ' 
are justly approved. I add to these the ' Evidences of the 
genuineness of the Gospels ' by the painstaking Professor 
Andrews Norton. They may, perhaps, do something to 
modify, at least, the extreme views of Dr. Isaac M. Wise 
in which you appear to participate. 

Very truly and respectfully. ' ' ] 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 65 



The Methodist Episcopal Church in North America 
may be regarded as the same body of Christians that in the 
British Islands is called Wesleyan Methodist. The latter 
may, perhaps, be the more correct designation, for the or- 
ganization is stamped throughout with John Wesley's linea- 
ments, spiritually, morally and mentally, and its structure 
was his handy work. This distinguished man was the second 
born of a family of six, three boys and three girls, all well 
endowed in body and mind. The parents lived at the little 
town of Epworth, in Lincolnshire, England. The father of 
the family was the Rev. Samuel Wesley, rector of the 
parish, and of course a member of the English Established 
Church. His eldest son, Samuel, was educated at the Uni- 
versity of Oxford and intended for the same church ; and 
the other two sons, John and Charles, after their preliminary 
education, were sent to the same university. John Wesley 
was born June 28th, 1703; Charles five years after. In the 
year 1709 the family parsonage was burnt, believed by 
incendiary hands, when the life of the boy John was pre- 
served almost by miracle, an event supposed to have had a 
profound effect upon his mind in after life, and much to do 
with the deep seriousness that was the masterspring of his 
soul. The Wesley family, mother and all, though church 
people in the head, were considerably puritan at heart, and 
by word and deed made consistent protest against the loose 
and vicious living of the people around them. This was 
what most probably provoked the incendiarism. 

Whilst at Oxford the brothers did not relax from the 
cautious and strict life in which they had been brought up, 
but standing aloof from the prevalent practices and habits 
of the young men around them, placed themselves under an 
■exceedingly rigid regimen of body, mind, and time, which 
brought down upon them and the few companions they 
had succeeded in acquiring a general unpopularity. Under 
such circumstances there must, of course, be a nickname 
for them. It might have been worse. They were called 
Methodists, it has been said, from the Methodici, one of the 
classes of physicians in old Rome, so styled because they 
' ' affected to depart from all other physicians and to follow 
a peculiar method of their own. ' ' James Hervey, the author 
of the Meditations among the Tombs, " was a member of 
Lincoln College, the same to which John and Charles Wes- 
ley belonged, and often took part in their religious exercises. 
But the most valuable acquisition was George Whitefield, 
son of an innkeeper at Gloucester, a member of Pembroke 



1 66 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

College, and a young man of uncommon eloquence and 
fervor. Their reading fed the flame already aroused in their 
souls. William Law's "Serious Call," Thomas a Kempis's 
' ' Imitation of Christ, ' ' Jeremy Taylor's ' ' Holy Living and 
Dying," and such works, guided their thoughts and actions. 
John Wesley took priest's orders, and for a few months 
assisted his father at Epworth. In the year 1735, his father 
having died, John Wesley accepted an invitation to go out 
to Georgia, in North America, to dispense a knowledge of 
religion to the colonists and the Indians. He was then 
about thirty-two years of age, and was accompanied by 
Charles and by Whitefield. The much that was expected 
of him was by no means accomplished, for he involved 
himself in ill-judged strifes and controversies in the effort 
to force people into acceptance of his peculiarly strait-laced 
notions and practices. Whilst on the ocean and in Georgia 
Wesley had become acquainted with the Moravians, and 
was deeply impressed with many of their views. Wesley 
remained in Georgia about three years, and on returning 
to England undertook to preach in some of the churches 
of the Establishment; but his manner and matter not suit- 
ing the tastes of many of the clergy and the better educated 
and wealthier classes of the laity, Episcopal pulpits soon 
became closed to him. He preached in some Dissenting 
chapels, but was not a favorite even with dissenters. In 
1742 he revisited old Epworth, and offered to the curate of 
the place to take part with him in the church services. But 
this was firmly declined. Wesley was, however, resolved the 
people should hear him, and so got it published abroad that 
at six o'clock on Sunday evening he would preach in the 
grave-yard. Wesley was present in due time, and also such 
a crowd as Epworth never saw before. He spoke standing 
on his father's tombstone, and the effect of his preaching 
was to bring forth groanings, tears, and lamentations from 
the great assembly. So he went on and on, and, forced by 
events he could not control, became the Moses of a new 
Israel, performing labors as preacher, writer, theologian, 
ruler, guide in a hundred ways more than can now be 
hinted at. His exertions were chiefly in England, but 
Scotland and Ireland were by no means neglected. Thus 
he went on, almost a wonder of the world, till the end, on 
the 2d March, 1791, still found him fully employed in his 
Master's service. At his death there were in his connexion 
about three hundred itinerant preachers, about one thou- 
sand local preachers, and a regular membership in the 
British islands of eighty thousand. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 167 

There are at the present time in North America about 
seventeen organizations sprung from the Wesleyan stock. 
They have about 360 conferences, 28,000 travelling and 
38,000 local preachers, and not far from 5,000,000 lay mem- 
bers, with perhaps twice as many attending listeners. Of 
the seventeen organizations some are white, some colored, 
some Arminian, some Calvinistic. 

The principal offshoot is the Methodist Protestant Church, 
which was born November, 1830. It has now over forty con- 
ferences, about 1400 travelling and nearly a thousand local 
preachers to about 120,000 lay members. Their doctrinal 
system is the same with that of the Episcopal Methodist, 
and, as the}' dispense with bishops, approximate Congre- 
gationalism. Touching foreign missions, Sunday schools, 
educational and publishing institutions the Methodists are 
the reverse of backward or slackhanded. 

Whitefield and Wesley did not long continue to work 
together. The former was Calvinistic, the latter Arminian ; 
though each respected the moral and spiritual character and 
sincerity of the other. So John Wesley dropped the close 
intimacy that one subsisted between the Moravians and 
himself. He had his frailties like other men, and some of 
them appear quite puerile and weak, yet his name will 
compete with almost any as teacher, preacher, and mission- 
ary, as well as head of a vast eccelesiastical establishment. 

Inasmuch as John and Charles Wesley never dissented 
from the mother church of England, they necessarily in- 
herited her ideas on fundamental theology. As to the 
soteriology, John Wesley had a system of his own. Let us 
give it some examination. 

The scripture doctrine as to Christ's death, and the man- 
ner in which it becomes available for the remission of sins, 
shows, first, that Christ died only for those who choose to 
belong to him, that is to say, for those who have believed 
and been baptized into him so that they have become part 
of him as they formerly were of Adam. Christ thus be- 
comes the representative of his people before God, who 
acknowledges the validity of this representation, because 
plain justice dictates that as many as desire to get clear 
from Adam and Adamic influences, into which they were 
helplessly born, should have full opportunity to do so. 
Christ therefore stands forth in the Divine presence for his 
people. His acts on their behalf are accounted in God's 
sight as their acts, and of which, their will concurring, they 
obtain much of the benefit. When, therefore, Christ died 
to fulfil the will of God, which will was that he should 



1 68 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

become a victim or sacrifice for the remission of sins in 
conformity with the pattern of the old law, (for the bloody 
sacrifices of the old law were a perpetual reminder that the 
forfeiture of life — typified by the sacrificial shedding of 
blood — was inseparably fixed to the commission of sin,) he 
died for himself and for all his actual followers, who are 
therefore accounted to have died with him. This obedi- 
ence to the will and law of God was a propitiation for the 
past sins of every member of Christ's church and a clear 
deliverance from those sins ; current involuntary trans- 
gressions and frailties (confessed and forsaken) being cared 
for by Christ's unceasing mediatorial priesthood before the 
throne and mercy-seat above. 

Accordingly, then, the propitiation and deliverance from 
the burden and stain of sin enjoyed by Christ's people have 
always hinged on Christ's crowning compliance with the 
Divine will, which compliance is therefore the basis of our 
chiefest gratitude to Christ, (yet never forgetting his pre- 
vious wonderful teachings and exemplary life,) as it has 
always been the ground of God's supreme approval of 
Christ and consequent exaltation of him to God's own 
right hand. Still, nothing is more assured than that the 
salvation by Christ, and Christ himself, are wholly ascrib- 
able to God's prevenient purposes of grace and mercy to 
man. Such, we believe, so far as it goes, a just statement 
of scripture teaching. 

It is observable that Methodist preachers and writers are 
quite exuberant in their reference to Christ's "merits," 
so that one might think the Bible teemed with repetitions 
of that word. Yet, like other favorite Nicenist terms and 
designations, the word "merit" does not once appear 
within the lids of the Bible. There is much difference 
between the Bible doctrine and Nicenist ideas on the sub- 
ject of Christ's work for man's reconciliation with God. 
Perfect as were Christ's obedience and service, and infinitely 
as they are and ever will be rewarded, they were still but 
a compliance with the Divine will. Doubtless, that is 
genuine merit and excellence, yet we must not combine 
with it any idea of supererogation. Ecclesiastical history 
contains a memorable chapter on the abuses of the doctrine 
of ' ' merits, ' ' and its being made the foundation for the 
shameless trade in indulgences. The doctrine is much 
restricted in Protestant hands, yet when ignorantly accepted 
may become dangerous. A blind trust in, perhaps, a mere 
form of words, whereby, as has been said, ' ' thousands on 
thousands have been renewed in a moment, as in the 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 69 

twinkling of an eye, ' ' may be quite a different thing from 
a real and well-grounded conversion. Where a very great 
boon is offered upon unexpectedly easy terms, it might not 
be very surprising that it is multitudinously accepted. 
Hence the readiness with which in Methodist expositions 
parallels are run between the results of Methodist exhorta- 
tions, and the effects from Peter's preaching on the day of 
Pentecost, is not quite justified. A great and amazing 
miracle, or, rather, series of miracles, had taken place ; 
Christ had been crucified but a short time before, and 
Jerusalem was profoundly stirred. Peter charged home 
upon his hearers their share of the guilt and responsibility 
of Christ's unrighteous immolation, and made them feel, 
individually in numerous cases and nationally in all, a 
degree of poignancy that pricked them to the heart, con- 
vinced them of their criminality, and brought out the con- 
fession and the cry, "What shall we do?" Peter promptly 
answered, ' ' Repent and be baptized into the name of him 
whom you crucified, and your sins shall be remitted and 
the Spirit of God poured out upon you." Would any 
Methodist minister, if precisely those hearers of Peter were 
reproduced before him, feel authorized to demand no more 
than Peter did ? Would he not say, ' ' Oh, you are Jews, 
you believe in One God and that there is no other but he. ' ' 
This won't do. You must believe in a God "under a 
threefold distinction or personality, " one of which person- 
alities contains two natures, a divine and a human ; hence 
one part of the God you must worship is a man, is human. 
After you have accepted this and discarded your mono- 
theism, you can repent of your sins and be baptized. 

To be consistent with his published creed, the creed of 
his church, the Methodist teacher would naturally thus 
speak. But it would arouse controversy and not contrition 
in his Jewish audience, and therefore no such penitential 
results would arise as took place on the day of Pentecost. 
Therefore until apostolic preaching and methodist are about 
the same, let not methodists claim the success of the Apostle 
Peter as if it were due to the preaching of Methodism. 

In his second epistle to Timothy, Paul, nearing the 
termination of a most faithful life, reported himself ' ' ready 
to be offered, and that the time of his departure was at 
hand. I have (said he) fought a good fight, I have finished 
my course, I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid 
up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the 
righteous Judge, will give me at that day." Here are 
several considerations other than simple reliance on Christ's 



170 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

"merits," one of which is that Paul had kept the faith, 
the true Christian faith, as to which his voluminous writings 
give many testimonies, but, since they all agree, the single 
one in 1st Corinthians, 8:6, will suffice. And that, as we 
have seen in Peter's case, is altogether different from the 
"three-fold distinction or personality" in God, which 
"Methodists believe." So that the question arises, 
Whether, before Methodists resign themselves almost or 
quite entirely to the mere acceptance of a single point of 
doctrine, it would not be wise and becoming in them, as 
men and professing Christians, to examine generally the 
foundations of their faith, and see, if in accepting unques- 
tioned, in a lump, the mass of Nicene dogmas and decrees, 
they were not less cautious and circumspect than they 
ought to have been ? The one simple circumstance that 
it was the habit of Christ and his Apostles to teach in the 
Jewish temple at Jerusalem, and in the Jewish synagogues 
elsewhere, is not without significance. It means that upon 
fundamental doctrines Christ and his apostles and the 
Jewish public agreed. The differences that arose related 
to Christ's messiahship and resurrection. Not a vestige of 
any such doctrines as are prevalent in these days, as the 
three persons in the godhead, pre-existence, incarnation, 
and their adjuncts, were ever broached in the temple or 
the synagogues of the Jews ! Yet these are the staple of 
the doctrines and teachings of the present time, which date 
not from the days of prophets and apostles or from the 
land of Judea, but from the fourth century after Christ and 
from sources distant from Palestine. 

It has been proposed, apparently in an authoritative 
quarter, to make the centennial anniversary of John Wes- 
ley's death in 1791 the occasion for a grand ecumenical or 
worldwide conference somewhere in the United States. 
How admirable would such an occasion be for the public 
renunciation by the Methodist body of the errors and follies 
with which Constantine's assemblage at Nice enshrouded 
the pure and simple elements of the Christian faith. The 
twentieth century ought not to find the professing Christian 
church still groping among the blunders and darkness of 
the fourth. 

But perhaps it might be thought that we have not suffi- 
ciently and satisfactorily accounted for or responded to the 
great cardinal doctrine which so occupied Wesley's thought 
and by the power of which, it is inferred, he was enabled 
to sway the myriads upon myriads of men that listened to 
his sermons. We find copied from one of Wesley's self- 






NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. IJT 

disparaging confessions the statement that he regarded all 
his religious exercises, his self-renouncements and denials, 
his fastings and preaching and prayers, and the charitable 
deeds that he did previous to his 35th or 36th year, as 
"altogether corrupt and abominable; that his works, his 
sufferings, his righteousness, so far from reconciling him 
to an offended God and making any atonement for the 
least of his sins, needed atonement themselves, or they 
could not abide God's righteous judgment; so that he had 
no hope but that of being justified freely through the re- 
demption that is in Jesus. ' ' He implored for faith ' ' that 
through the merits of Christ his sins would be forgiven. ' ' 
He claimed that ' ' trust in Christ and in Christ alone, for 
salvation," granted to him as an actual experience, was- 
that which alone took " away his sins " and "saved him 
from the law of sin and death." 

We would be the very last in the world to seek to deprive 
John Wesley, or any of his followers, or anybody else, of 
anything which might seem to them an assurance of the 
Divine acceptance and favor. God forbid it should be 
otherwise. God's gifts come to his creatures in infinite 
variety. That is not the point; but the point is that since 
men may and do make mistakes; since they are not unfre- 
quently enthusiastic — we do not say fanatical — it will not 
be always safe to adopt for a basis of expectation of the 
Divine favor anything which is devoid of the express 
indorsement of the Divine Word. No Bible text can be 
shown where the ' ' merits of Christ ' ' are proposed as that 
through which "alone" " sins can be forgiven. " Millions- 
may, indeed, say so; but millions are not the Bible; nor can 
millions save us. 

Just before Christ's departure from the mountain in 
Galilee to the heavenly world, he informed his disciples 
that all power (essential to his Christhood) had been 
granted to him, whereby free scope of action, no longer 
confined to Judea, was everywhere given to him, and, 
through him, to them. He then commissioned his dis- 
ciples, now fully his apostles, to go forth in ever}* direction 
and ' ' teach all nations ' ' by an immersal of them into the 
name, that is to say, into the doctrine or knowledge, of the 
Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. This is in 
Matthew. In the synoptic Mark the parallel passage reads: 
"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every 
creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, 
and he that believeth not shall be damned. ' ' Now in both 
these passages of scripture, which mean the same thing with 



172 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

a variation in expression, the preliminary consideration is 
that something is to be taught or communicated. That 
something is the knowledge of God, of His Son and His 
Spirit, or, in one word, the gospel. After this is accepted 
and understood, in other words, after the gospel is taught 
and believed, there will come the duty of public acknowl- 
edgement of it by the rite of personal baptism of the body, 
directly enforced by Mark and impliedly by Matthew, either 
by indoctrination into the knowledge of "the Son " or the 
observance of the "all things whatsoever." With belief 
and baptism salvation is connected; without them, damna- 
tion is denounced. 

In the seventeenth chapter of John's gospel Christ defines 
1 ' life eternal ' ' to consist in the knowledge of the ' ' Only 
true God, the Father, and of Jesus Christ whom the Father 
had sent. ' ' Taken in connextion with the above-mentioned 
texts in Matthew and Mark the inference must be just that 
" salvation " and the " knowledge of the true God and His 
•Son" are convertible and equivalent, or that the one is 
identical with the other. 

Now, then, if salvation, or, which is the same thing, 
life eternal, are the reward of a knowledge of the true God 
and of His Son, with the sequence of outward baptism in 
the world's face, why did Mr. Wesley put these things be- 
hind his back and cast his hopes upon Christ's "merits " 
alone, irrespective of all belief and all action besides? — And 
especially as no such thing is anywhere proposed in the 
Eible? Was he not in respect to his decision determined 
rather by his reading of William Law and Jonathan Ed- 
wards than by the calm trust of the royal Psalmist, or of 
the Apostle Peter and his fellows in the apostolate? That 
passage, 2d Cor., 5: 18, which tells us that "all things are 
of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, 
to wit, that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them" — we 
suggest that this passage of the scripture would have shown 
Wesley that God should have had a share in his " trust " 
and not Christ alone, just as a saving knowledge of the gos- 
pel is not a knowledge of Christ only, but of the Father 
and operative Spirit also. It seems hardly to be questioned 
that the gratitude and praises addressed to Christ alone 
which comprise so large a proportion of the contents of 
most hymn books and poetical compositions must be re- 
ferred to the ideas in which Wesley shared. It will be no 
•diminution of the thanks, honor, and praise we owe to 
Christ for his free-will sufferings and death on our behalf, 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 7$ 

to keep ever in rememberance that thereunto was he ap- 
pointed by His Father, for ' ' all things are of God ' ' who, 
by means of Christ, reconciled us unto himself through a 
merciful omission to impute to us the guilt of the tres- 
passes we have committed — that is to say, by the exercise 
of His divine Sovereign forgiveness. ' ' By grace are ye 
saved, through faith ; and that not of vourselves ; it is the 
gift of God." 

In this doctrine of forgiveness, exercised by God the 
Father, it seems to us, (and we hope to be forgiven for 
saying so,) neither Wesley nor many others with sounding 
names have a very vigorous, or even a real reliance. 
There seems to lurk in many of their declarations more 
or less of the idea that God the Father is a stern and severe 
creditor or taskmaster, who will exact the uttermost farthing, 
and that therefore it is through Christ's leniency, compas- 
sion, and generosity alone that mankind have any just 
ground for hope of final salvation. They do not seem to 
see that notwithstanding Christ's sacrifice of himself there 
was and is still left very broad need and room for the exer- 
tion of the Divine forgiveness. "If we confess our sins, 
God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse 
us from all unrighteousness. " It is most true that ' ' if 
any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
Christ the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins ; 
and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole 
world." But these consoling and invaluable utterances, 
of the Spirit of God show that though we and all the 
world have an advocate with the Father, yet he, the advo- 
cate, is not the final resort, but a mediating agent for us. 
with Him who sitteth on the throne of judgment. The 
transgressions that require pardon are transgressions not 
against Christ, but against God the Father, with whom 
Christ treats for our forgiveness, pleading before the throne 
of God whatever may be alleged in extenuation of our 
demerits and sins. It is God who must finally forgive or 
refuse forgiveness, and the ground, or at least a very prin- 
cipal ground, for forgiveness is our confession of our sins. 
No pleading of Christ's merits is presented as a ground 
of forgiveness, whilst, undoubtedly, it was the meritorious 
fidelity and excellence of Christ that gave him the position 
of advocate. Christ's worth and vast weight in God's 
esteem will, we may be sure, give the greatest value to his 
pleadings in our behalf, yet, after all, the final decision is 
with the mind of God, and with that alone. Is not this- 
demonstrated in our daily prayer to Our Father, ' ' forgive 



174 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

us our trespasses " ? Was not Christ's prayer to the Father 
when he implored forgiveness on his murderers, " Father, 
forgive them, they know not what they do " ? 

We very readily admit that in his capacity of our repre- 
sentative, or our "federal head," as Christ has been termed, 
or the head of his body, the church, (of which those who 
have been baptized into Christ are the members,) — we very 
readily admit that we may point the Divine consideration 
to Christ's perfect obedience, and urge its worth, yet that 
■can only be effectually done by those who have an honest 
-consciousness of having striven to be, to the best of their 
ability, faithful workers of the Christian law. And could 
not John Wesley have with entire truth and honesty 
claimed, even in the sacred presence of God, of Christ, and 
of his own solemn conscience, that at least those religious 
exercises, self-renunciations, preachings, prayers and chari- 
table deeds which he did previous to his 35th or 36th year, 
were at least sincere and well-intentioned and designed at 
the time for service to God? We fully believe he could, 
and can see nothing to raise a doubt that those works would 
have been so accepted. His first thoughts on this point 
appear to have been his best, for the second thought seems 
to lack any scriptural basis. And we think it by no means 
unlikely that the second thoughts were the fruit of perusal 
■of writings at that period more fashionably ecclesiastical, 
perhaps, than they were apostolic. 

As an instance of the wrongfully prevailing tendency 
among many churches and religious people to place the 
dignity and supremacy of God the Father in a position of 
actual disparagement, we will run the risk of a reference 
to the history of the earthquakes that in the year 1886 pro- 
duced such havoc in and near the city of Charleston, South 
Carolina. At such times, and in all times when mankind 
are driven beyond the ordinary conventionalities, the beat- 
ings of the popular heart can more surely be learned from 
the common people than from the educated and refined 
classes. The colored population of Charleston exhibited 
during the terrors of the earthquake the ultimate meaning 
of the religious teachings they had all along been receiving. 
In the depth of their fright, with their souls probed to their 
centre, they showed who was their final reliance; who was 
truly their God. The public press reported that "the name 
•of Jesus was most frequently used, and, as if supplicating 
God face to face, they shrieked out in the very helplessness 
and pathos of despair, such sentences as "Do, my Master, 
Jesus, have mercy on me." "Oh, sweet Jesus, save me, 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 75 

save me." "Let me live through this night, my God, my 
Saviour." "Hold me up once more, thou blessed Christ, 
my Master. " The large majority of the hymns sung in 
their churches — and the hymns make the deepest impres- 
sions on their minds — are in praise of Christ, — God, as a 
being distinct from Christ, scarcely ever practically enter- 
ing their thoughts. The human heart seems capable of 
having in reality but One God; no matter what the brain 
may argue or the tongue be taught to articulate, the heart 
kneels to One God alone. It might be Jesus, it might 
be the virgin Mary, it might be some other, it might be 
the true God, but it is always only One, for the mind in- 
stinctively rejects distraction. In respect to baptism, it 
might be incidentally remarked, the bulk of the colored 
people seem to be instinctively right. Regarding baptism 
as the sign of a sincerely religious purpose, and that in 
baptism we propose to ' ' put on Christ, ' ' they use immersion 
of the whole person. 

Wesley's affection for the English Episcopal Church led 
him blindly to adopt the system of Psedobaptism. This was 
to the serious injury of his own system, thereby left incom- 
plete. The tenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles illus- 
trates this. Cornelius, the Gentile centurion, approved of 
God and man, was by the Divine will to be inducted into 
the Christian church, to become a member of Christ and an 
heir of salvation. Appropriate means were adopted, and 
Cornelius and his party were instructed in the leading 
principles of the Christian faith by the chief of the apostolic 
band. The procedure was divinely crowned by a general 
outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Just here, according to 
Methodist principles and practice, the business was, to all 
intents, at an end. Able Methodist preaching informs us 
that when ' ' sinners have been invited to methodist altars, 
and they have been directed to their atoning Saviour and 
bidden to look and live, thousands and thousands of them 
have been renewed in a moment — as in the twinkling of an 
eye. ' ' And here the matter of Christian induction by the 
Methodists appears to stop. The sinners have become 
"believers," but they have fallen short of fully obeying 
Christ's dictum, in that they have not been "baptized." 
Now, we may certainly suppose that the outpouring of the 
gift of the Holy Ghost (accompanied, too, by miraculous 
powers) was at least equal in salvable force and efficiency to 
any "renewal " ever accomplished by Methodist agencies. 
Yet that outpouring was not sufficient. Peter appealed for 
something else. He demanded a closing process, and there- 



176 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

upon commanded the converts " to be baptized in the name 
of the Lord." This terminated the matter. Nothing fur- 
ther is anywhere said of Cornelius or his friends. No more 
needed to be said. They had been born again out of Adam 
into Christ; had "put on" Christ, which is a far more real 
and thorough thing than "looking" at him, and nothing 
was now left them but to live lives to the end consistently 
with those new relations they had assumed. 

The Methodist deficiency thus becomes easily perceptible. 
The inward " renewal," which is the equivalent of " be- 
lieving," must be followed by practical baptism with water 
in, or into, the name of Christ. It will not do to say that 
the Methodist converts were baptized in their infancy, or 
babyhood, perhaps, and that that was and is enough. The 
only baptism that can be efficacious must follow, and not 
precede, the " renewal " within, or the lt believing;" and 
the baptism must be the result of the convert's own intelli- 
gent and earnest desire, and not merely that of his parents, 
kindred, or friends. 



The Universalist Church in the United States appears 
by a report in 1884 to have had within its control 1 national 
convention, 22 State conventions, 73 ecclesiastical asso- 
ciations, 948 parishes, 669 ministers, 4 colleges, 2 theo- 
logical seminaries, 6 academies, and 34,349 church mem- 
bers. Since 1884 there has probably been a proportionate 
augmentation of these figures. 

The idea around which this denomination is gathered 
has come down from the early days of Christian history. 
Origen, who was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria 
in the year 185 after Christ, and a man of immense learning 
for those days, both sacred and profane, advocated the idea 
that the torments of the damned would at some time cease. 
He held, however, some remarkable notions which much 
interfered with the popularity of his doctrines. Amongst 
these may be mentioned that the souls of mankind exist 
before men appear in this world, to which they are sent in 
punishment of sins committed in a pre-existent state. 
Also that the sun, moon, and stars have souls; that after 
the general resurrection all bodies will be round; and that 
as Christ was crucified on earth to save mankind, he will 
be crucified in the next world to save devils. Gregory, of 
Nyssa, was an admirer of Origen in some respects, and ap- 
pears to have adopted his views about restoration; Thea- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 77 

dore, of Mopsuestia in Cilicia, is supposed to have thought 
the same way. Of reputed authors and thinkers among 
the moderns who have favored the restoration doctrines, 
Archbishop Tillotson was one ; Dr. Gilbert Burnet; Bishop 
Thomas Newton ; the celebrated William Whiston ; Soame 
Jenyns, author of the Internal Evidence of the Christian 
Religion; David Hartley, who so strenuously opposed the 
war against the American colonies, and was appointed on 
the British side to negotiate with Dr. Franklin the terms 
of peace ; William Law, author of the Serious Call ; and 
nearer our own day Thomas de Quincy and Professor 
Maurice. John Foster, the Baptist, wrote against the 
doctrine of endless punishment. The same doctrine was 
publicly taught in this country by Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, 
in Boston, 1762, and the first church built in the restoration 
interest was in Gloucester, Mass., in 1780, of which the 
Rev. John Murray was pastor. What is called the Win- 
chester (New Hampshire) confession was adopted in 1803. 
It declares, 1st. We believe that the Holy Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testament contain a revelation of the 
character of God and of the duty, interest, and final desti- 
nation of mankind. 2d. We believe that there is One 
God, whose nature is Love, revealed in One Lord Jesus 
Christ by One Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore 
the whole family of man to holiness and happiness. 3d. 
We believe that holiness and true happiness are inseparably 
connected, and that believers ought to be careful to main- 
tain order and practice good works; for these things are 
good and profitable to men. Accepting this confession, 
the Universalist Church claims to be thoroughly Christian 
in belief, holding inflexibly to the authority of the Bible, 
the divine mission and office of Christ, the absolute neces- 
sity of a holy life, the certainty of a just retribution for sin 
and the assurance of the final triumph of good over evil 
and holiness over sin, in all worlds and all souls. 

The Universalists are not exactly a unit in point of doc- 
trine. Some believe in a final restoration to holiness, to be 
effected subsequently to the general resurrection of the 
dead, either all at once or successively as fitness in each 
case might dictate. So they believe in a state of probation 
after death. Others hold that so great a change will be 
effected in human character by the simple process of death 
or resurrection, or both, that no matter how unregenerate 
and ungodly a man might be at death, he will rise from the 
grave in a state of fitness to enter the perfectness and bliss 
of heaven. Perhaps the first-mentioned class of thinkers 



178 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

predominate in Europe; the latter in the United States. 
Referring to the latter class, we find them taking pretty 
high ground. It is argued that God's omniscient foresight 
beheld, before the creation, the historic profile of every 
individual of the coming race. He saw the end of all 
prior to their beginning. As a Being of infinite benevo- 
lence they claim that it became the Creator either not to 
create at all, or so to ordain every human life that after all 
its trials, temptations, misfortunes and sufferings its end 
should be everlasting peace and joy. Those trials, tempta- 
tions and sufferings are disciplinary only, intended to teach 
and to warn. The Divine foresight, it is assumed, " is a 
solemn pledge on God's part" that every life He originates 
' ' shall prove a final blessing to its possessor. ' ' The justice 
of God, it is argued, could not mete out to temporary and 
finite sin a punishment out of all proportion greater than 
itself; besides which, God cannot suffer anything by the 
sin. He is above and beyond all human reach. Why, 
then, should God inflict the awful vengeance of eternal 
suffering on his "helpless children"? Say they, "God's 
justice demands an end to punishment and the final re- 
demption of all." Even Satan, it is urged, could do no 
worse than is affirmed of God's purpose against a part of 
mankind; God cannot and will not do anything but the 
very opposite of what might be presumed of the devil. 

God's love and goodness stand evidenced in the material 
creation, and Christ's mission was to save his people 
from their "sins and iniquities" "in this present evil 
world." This proves God's care for not only the bodies 
but the souls of men, for we cannot believe that the never- 
dying soul would be less cared for than the transient and 
perishing body. Now if this ' ' present evil world ' ' is the 
scene of Christ's saving work, then it is not from the evils 
of any future world that he seeks to save. From this the 
"final holiness and blessedness of all men" is inferred. 

God commands men to "overcome evil with good." 
Will God Himself do less? Will the God who commands 
men to forgive their enemies eternally torment His own ? 
It cannot be. God punishes only to correct. He does not 
willingly afflict the children of men. It was God's purpose 
to reconcile all men to Himself by the blood of Christ's 
cross. Christ is the propitiation for our sins and not for 
ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. The Father 
sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. God promised 
to Abraham that in him all the families of the earth should 
be blessed — that is to say, through Christ, who was to spring 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 79 

from the loins of Abraham. The resurrection that was 
brought to pass in Christ's person will happen to all, and 
will be not a mere resurrection of the body, ' ' but be a 
moral and spiritual uplifting, exaltation, or raising of the 
whole being into the Divine or heavenly likeness. ' ' Since 
all (not only saints, but all) will be changed in the twink- 
ing of an eye from corruptible to incorruptible, the good 
and evil alike will rise from the grave freed from all sin and 
tendency to sin and "universal blessedness and holiness" 
pervade every soul. As the spring returning every year 
brings back to the face of nature life and freshness and 
beauty, so will the resurrection morning open upon an 
entirely redeemed and perfected world. 

Such in the main and in brief is the Universalist doc- 
trine. Is there objection to it? There seems to be. In 
the first place, the Universalists apply to all mankind, with- 
out discrimination, those gracious provisions and merci- 
ful promises which are designed for the faithful servants 
of God and followers of Christ alone. In their view the 
Bible regards all men as "the sheep," none of them "the 
goats." Thus we find them quoting with much satis- 
faction the passage in Romans, 8: 38 and 39, where they 
should note that the ' ' love of God ' ' spoken of is that which 
" is in Christ Jesus our Lord," meaning that out of Christ 
Jesus our Lord none can confidently hope for the love of 
God. There are circumstances, however, when ' ' our God 
is a consuming fire, ' ' of which both Old and New Testa- 
ments testify. There is also a "wrath to come," from 
which we are admonished to flee. Likewise wheat for the 
garner and chaff for unquenchable fire. The Universalists 
permit themselves to look on one side only of the Divine 
character and administration. 

Universalists speak a good deal about the ' ' moral and 
spiritual world." Judging by their general views their 
' i moral ' ' world must be a very ineffective state. Death 
and resurrection, one or both, are incomparably more 
effectual to prepare mankind for eternal holiness and 
happiness than any moral or spiritual education that ap- 
pears anywhere. That death and resurrection, one or 
both, should produce such effects must be regarded as the 
greatest and most unaccountable of prodigies. No meta- 
morphosis in ancient mythology surpasses it in extrava- 
gance. 

Universalism is inconsistent with itself. It asserts that 
every transgressor must suffer the punishment of his own 
sin. But what opportunity can there be for this in the 



l8o NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

case of transgressors who are struck dead in the very act 
if, when they rise at the great'day, they shall be "raised 
in their whole being in the Divine or heavenly likeness?" 
They must certainly escape altogether. Can so lucky a 
fate be predicted for the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomor- 
rah ; or Korah, Dathan and Abiram ; or Ahaband Jezebel ; 
or Judas Iscariot ; the proud and self-worshipping King 
Herod ; how the abominable Xero ; the hideous Domitian ; 
Commodus; Caracalla ; Heliogabalus; the third King Rich- 
ard, — nay, has not every one recollection of instances in 
which transgressors have been cut off in the very bloom of 
their wickedness? Are we to understand that because 
these and such as these will in the order of Providence rise 
again at the last day, they will therefore be raised in the 
Divine likeness? If so, why submit anybody to the pain- 
ful and unprofitable processes of trial, tribulation, and 
moral ordeal, when death and resurrection will of them- 
selves in some way perfectly restore, or rather create, holi- 
ness ? If the Universalist doctrine is true, Solomon and 
Christ were very wide of the mark when they taught that 
in the silence of the grave and the night of death no de- 
vice or work could be performed. 

It will be to no purpose in any effort to answer these 
objections to quote scripture predictions of what will take 
place in the case of the servants of God and the followers 
of Christ. It should not be forgotten that much the larger 
part of the New Testament is addressed, not to the world- 
ling and the godless, but to those who have enlisted in 
truth and verity under the Christian banner, and rest 
quietly beneath their master's yoke. Even the Lord's 
prayer was spoken to, and is yet the special property of, 
Christ's disciples. Therefore most of the scripture quo- 
tations applied by Universalists to all mankind were meant 
to be restricted to Christians, or believers, alone. 

They seem to infer that the resurrection will be simul- 
taneous for all. But this is also a mistake. Christ, our 
elder brother, has already risen, being the first fruits of them 
that slept. Those who are Christ's will rise at his second 
coming, for in the resurrection to come the dead in Christ 
will rise first, and take their place in the blessed first resur- 
rection. Afterwards will rise the dead who are not in 
Christ ; to more or less of whom may appertain that in- 
finitely awful destiny, the second death. Perhaps it was at 
this that Felix trembled when Paul reasoned with him of 
righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. 

Did Universalists never reflect on the consequences to 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. l8l 

mankind of a simple non-preparation for the scenes of 
another world ? Suppose God entirely withholds the tor- 
ments of which they speak, will the negligent still be safe? 
Nowhere do we read of an intermediate state between 
heaven and hell. If, then, the careless passenger through 
this life misses heaven, where will he alight? Will not 
the simple loss of heaven be remorse and wretchedness 
enough to fill his soul with woe? Would not that dis- 
appointment be quite hell enough? How would a farmer 
feel at the close of the year if, wedded to sports and 
pleasures through the working seasons, he neglected the 
plowing and planting, the digging and seeding, and the 
other various occupations incident to the cultivation of a 
well-ordered farm? Having produced nothing, how could 
he and his family subsist through the winter? Would not 
their bitter cry be, "The harvest is past; the summer is 
ended, and we are not saved? " And how otherwise can 
it be with them who pass their life-year after the same 
careless, idle manner? With them "who despise the 
riches of God's goodness, and forbearance and longsuffer- 
ing, not knowing that the goodness of God should lead 
them to repentance? Who, in their hardness and impeni- 
tence of heart, treasure up wrath against the day of wrath 
and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will 
render to every man according to his deeds : to them, who 
by patient continuance in welldoing seek for glory and 
honor and immortality, eternal life ; but to them who are 
contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey un- 
righteousness, indignation, and wrath, tribulation and an- 
guish upon every soul of man that doeth evil ; of the Jew 
first and also of the Gentile, for there is no respect of per- 
sons with God." That is Paul's picture ; does it savour of 
Universalism ? Can any one justly regard that system of 
xeligious thought to be favorable to a growth in righteous- 
ness which secretly hints to the sinner's heart that, after 
all, it might be pretty good policy to cultivate cunning 
and artful dishonesties, and occasionally indulge in pleasant 
immoralities, even down to the instant of death, because 
death and resurrection will in some way effect all the moral 
and spiritual change that is necessary to start one upon a 
new career of holiness and blessedness in the next world? 
Knowing, as we do, the deceitfulness of sin, and the fool- 
ishness and corruption of the unregenerate heart, will it 
be wise to furnish it with a system of belief that is itself 
as great a temptation to unfaithfulness as could well be 
imagined ? 



1 82 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Another inconsistency in Universalism is that it saves 
men against their will, or at least, without consulting their 
wishes in the matter. Even if the dying sinner has gone 
down into the grave cursing God Himself in his heart and 
upon his lips, Universalism alleges that with the resurrec- 
tion there will come "a moral and spiritual change which 
will remove all the elements of the earthly and renew his 
soul in the likeness of God. " 

Universalist teachers are not forward to suggest to their 
hearers and readers that all, without exception, must stand 
before the judgment-seat of Christ. Nor, with the doc- 
trines they hold, is this to be wondered at. For what can 
a judgment-seat find to do if every human being, as he or 
she rises from the tomb, comes forth "uplifted, exalted, 
or raised, throughout the whole being into the Divine or 
heavenly likeness" ? Each soul, having become " spirit- 
ually a child of God," will require no tribunal to determine 
its quality and character, for that will be stamped upon 
each in the sight of the whole universe. As well think of 
gathering Gabriel and Michael, the seraphim and cherubim, 
for trial and judgment around Christ's tribunal, as the 
family of mankind who have, simply by resurrection, 
become ' ' children of God and equal unto the angels. ' ' 
Under circumstances such as these, Christ's judgment-seat 
must, if Universalist ideas be correct, become a useless 
display whose object has been anticipated. It is true that 
Jesus told the Sadducean Jews (Luke 20th) that certain of 
those who will rise from the dead will not ' ' die any more, 
for they are equal unto the angels and are the children of 
God, being the children of the resurrection." They are 
not, however, the "children of this world," but such as 
shall be " accounted worthy to obtain that world and the 
resurrection (presumably the first resurrection) from the 
dead " — a restricting clause which is resented by a leading 
Universalist author, who thinks that because Matthew in 
the parallel passage omits the clause, he attached no weight 
to it. It is highly likely, nevertheless, that Luke gives it 
as Christ spoke it, for the whole text consists of an an- 
tithesis, or contrast, showing the difference that would be 
observed between the children of " this " world and of 
"that." Then, in speaking of those who shall be " ac- 
counted worthy," a perfectly distinct intimation is given 
of a day of account. 

The advantage to Universalism sought for in the simile 
proposed between the renewal of the earth's face in the 
spring-time and the great moral renewal of the world of 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 183 

mankind at the resurrection does not really exist. If 
mankind at large were as obedient to the Divine laws as 
material nature is, such a simile might have place; but, as 
man is to a great extent rebellious, the parallel does not 
hold good, nor is any illustration furnished by it. 

We close these cursory remarks by simply noticing the 
tone of Universalists in seeming to dictate what God ought 
to be and to do. There is contained in this a virtual censure 
of the deluge; of the overthrow of the cities of the plain; 
the punishment of the disobedient Israelites, and, in fact, 
almost the whole history of God's dealings with sinful man- 
kind recorded from Genesis to Revelations. God is truly 
love and mercy to those who meekly trust in Him; but to 
the contentious and disobedient God is not unrighteous in 
taking vengeance. Lastly, If the righteous scarcely be 
saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear? 



The last church organization we propose to consider is 
The Unitarian, which is so called because its distinguish- 
ing tenet is that the Godhead of the Universe is not divided 
up among two or three or more personalities, but is filled 
by One Infinite and Eternal Being, whose intellect is all 
comprehensive; — whose goodness is absolutely perfect, and 
power illimitable. An ancient Grecian philosopher, who 
lived more than 500 years before Christ, arrived, by the 
bare exercise of his reasoning faculties, at the conclusion 
that there can be only One God, because if there were more 
than one, neither of them could be perfect; neither would 
be God. The illustrious Plato, who flourished between 400 
and 500 years before Christ, was a believer in the Divine 
unity, but, from a lack of that fidelity to honest convictions 
which is no less a duty than a glory to every man, he did 
not give the prominency and force to the results of his 
thinking which he ought to have done, but kept his purer 
and nobler ideas in comparative concealment, out of un- 
worthy deference to the ignorant and corrupt notions of 
his day. 

Greater than any Grecian sage the divinely-instructed 
Moses, leader of the Hebrew people not only out of corpo- 
real bondage, but from heathen darkness into mental truth 
and moral light, taught his people, under the ordination of 
God Himself, the massive and elevating doctrine of the 
simple unity, the absolute oneness of God. He reported 
to the Hebrews the name which the Great Supreme had 
chosen for his own designation — " I am that I am. ' ' Thus 



184 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

shalt thou say (said God to Moses) unto the children of 
Israel, " I am hath sent me unto you;" that is to say, the 
simple, sole, individual, self-existent, eternal Jehovah. 
And again, in fuller description, he declares unto the peo- 
ple of Israel that "Unto them it was showed, that they 
might know that Jehovah is God; there is none else beside 
Him." And, as if to remove every conceivable idea that 
might infest their minds contrary to this oneness of the 
Deity, and that He, and He alone, inhabits the universe and 
is the sole and only God in heaven, he quotes God's own 
words and warning, "See now that I, even I, am He, and 
there is no God with me. ' ' (Deut. , 32 : 39. ) Can Trinitarians, 
learned or unlearned, construct language more pointedly 
and completely expressive of the personal oneness of God 
than this? And if there were, at the time this utterance 
was made, and had been from all eternity, three equal con- 
stituents in the Divine personality, could it be truthfully 
said that the utterance was a correct description of the 
nature and being of God? Did God, in that utterance, 
declare the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth? Does not an assertion of the doctrine of the Trinity 
imply essential unfaithfulness in God's account of Himself, 
or (if our Trinitarian friends are right) of themselves? 

Of the testimonies of the great prophet Isaiah, who re- 
ports God as saying (Isaiah, 44 and 45), "I am Jehovah 
and there is none else; there is no God besides me," we 
have already sufficiently spoken. The testimonies of Christ 
and his Apostles are all to the same effect, teaching the 
unity of God as "the first and great commandment of all" 
in precisely the same unperverted sense in which that 
unity has always been understood and accepted by the 
Jewish people now and in all past time. (See Mark, 12 : 29 
to 34.) 

Holding thus to the unsophisticated doctrine of the Di- 
vine unity, the Unitarians permanently wonder at the pre- 
valence among Christians, in this comparatively enlightened 
age, of doctrines utterly untaught and contradicted by the 
Bible. It could not be out of any design of casting con- 
tempt or ridicule upon the opposite Trinitarian doctrine 
that Archbishop Whately thus discourses in his book on 
logic: "Nothing," he says, "can be more indistinctly ex- 
plained than is the doctrine of the Trinity in scripture ; 
nor are we, perhaps, capable, with our present faculties, 
of comprehending it more fully. Theology (that is, Trini- 
tarian theology) teaches, says a passage in a Protestant 
work, that there is in God, one essence, two processions, 






NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 85 

three persons, four relations, five notions, and circumin- 
cession, which the Greeks call perichoresis. ' ' Nevertheless, 
the good archbishop clings to the scripturally unexplained 
and humanly unintelligible Trinity, showing, besides, a 
facility at misinterpreting very plain and obvious passages 
of scripture that should bring a blush upon the cheek of . 
a youth in his Greek primer, if found equally at fault. 
Whilst the excellent archbishop doubts the competency 
of the human faculties to comprehend the Trinity more 
fully than the indistinct explanation of the Trinity in the 
scriptures now permits, (unless the trouble lies in the ' ' in- 
distinct explanation,") it might be brought to mind that 
the Apostle Paul said to the elders of the Ephesian Church 
that he had ' ' kept back nothing that was profitable ' ' unto 
them, and had not ' ' shunned to declare unto them all the 
counsel of God." Supposing Paul to have uttered the 
truth, the inevitable inference must be that the doctrine of 
the Trinity was not, in Paul's judgment, either "profit- 
able," or any part of " the counsel of God." Can we be 
surprised that such a doctrine is most " indistinctly ex- 
plained" in the scriptures, or that it is not explained at 
all? The conclusion justly follows from both St. Paul and 
Dr. Whately that there is in the Bible no such doctrine as 
a Trinity of the Godhead, and therefore nothing about it 
to be explained, either distinctly or indistinctly. 

With respect to the nature and person of Christ there have 
some differences among Unitarians. They all, however, 
agree that Christ is not God nor demi-god, angel nor 
spirit, but a human being, no more and no less. He is not, 
what some are pleased to call, a "mere man," but the Son 
of God by special generation, to whom the Holy Ghost was 
imparted "not by measure." He was the divinely-com- 
missioned teacher, master, and Lord of God's people; — the 
very prophet foretold by Moses that should arise like him 
out of the midst of the Jewish nation, to whom all, Jews 
and Gentiles, should give heed at the risk of the penalty 
of utter destruction. The belief of all Unitarians seems to 
be comprehended in what is known as the Apostles" creed, 
which John Milton justly describes as "the most ancient 
and universally-received compendium of belief in the pos- 
session of the church." Of course, then, Unitarians reject 
that travesty and perversion of the Apostles' statement 
which is called the Nicene Creed, so called, but not with 
entire correctness, for though it was commenced at the 
council of Nice in the year 325, was not completed till the 
year 381 at the second general council of Constantinople. 



1 86 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Even then it was not in the same shape in which we now 
have it, for an important and, as the event showed, an 
almost fatal addition was made to it afterwards. The 
decision of the council of Nice has been described by an 
eminent Episcopal bishop as " the greatest misfortune that 
ever befel the Christian world. ' ' 

On the subject of Baptism Unitarians are not unanimous, 
some holding to immersion, whilst, perhaps, the majority 
are satisfied with aspersion or affusion. The rite of the 
Lord's Supper is now and always has been observed by 
them. 

The eschatology of the denomination is various. Many, 
particularly in Europe, are Restorationists, but in this 
country those views are not put prominently forward, and 
are not, I believe, at all in favor with the best thinkers of 
the church. The Unitarian Bernard Whitman's "Friendly 
Letters to a Universalist" is a powerful testimony against 
the truth of Universalism. 

Rather than present statements of our own, we offer the 
following comprehensive sketch of the earlier history of 
Unitarian opinion from an "orthodox" publication, the 
International Cyclopaedia: " There have been," says that 
work, "Unitarians from the earliest period of ecclesiastical 
history. Until the middle of the second century there 
seems to have been no controversy on the subject ; but 
from that time to the end of the third century there was a 
succession of eminent teachers who maintained against the 
ecclesiastical doctrine of the Logos, the undivided unity, 
or, as they expressed it, the monarchy of God. From their 
use of this word they are known in ecclesiastical history 
as the Monarchians. There are generally understood to 
have been two classes of them ; those who taught that 
Christ was God in such a sense that it was the Father 
who became man and was born and suffered, and who were 
on that account called Patripassians ; and secondly, those 
who held that Christ was in nature a mere man, but ex- 
alted above all others prophets by the superior measure of 
Divine wisdom with which he was endowed, and who, 
therefore, corresponded more nearly with the modern 
Unitarians. It is right to notice, however, that the doc- 
trines of the Monarchians are known to us only through 
the statements of opponents, and it is probable they would 
have disowned the more extreme views ascribed to them. 
To the former of the two classes we have mentioned, be- 
longed Praxeas, against whom there is a treatise by Ter- 
tullian and Noetus ; and, at a later period, about the mid- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 187 

die of the third century, the famous Sabellius taught very 
similar doctrines. The Monarchians appeal in support of 
their doctrines to the Old and New Testaments, and to the 
early opinions of the church. They are said by Tertullian 
to have consisted of the simple and unlearned, ' always, ' 
he adds, 'a majority of the faithful,' — a statement which 
shows that they must have been tolerably numerous in his 
time. ' ' 

So says the Cyclopaedia; but if, as Tertullian avers, "a 
majority of the faithful'' were Monarchians, that is to say, 
Unitarians, the words ' ' tolerably numerous ' ' belittle the 
truth in the case. What Tertullian says amounts to this: 
that a majority of the Christian masses in his day, which 
was between A. D. 160 and 245, were Unitarians. If 
inquiry were made for the distinguished sources under 
whose authority those Monarchians believed, their own 
answer of the Old and New Testaments and the early 
church would be the true one. The "monarchy" meant 
the supremacy of the One God, the Father. 

In more modern times many men, whose names will 
never be forgotten, have declared themselves worshippers 
of the Father as the only true God. Anything like a tol- 
erably full list would be too voluminous here and now. A 
few only can be given to suggest their respectability. Chris- 
topher Cellarius, a learned German, professor of history at 
the University of Halle, suffered imprisonment for his 
opinions and finally escaped to freer Switzerland. He was 
a friend of Luther and Melancthon. Gentilis, an Italian, 
escaped to England. He was of a distinguished and 
learned family. The two Socini, Lselius the uncle and 
Faustus the nephew, were men of superior intellect, learn- 
ing and pure character; of whom the latter is the more 
famous, for of him it was written on his tomb in Latin f 
meaning thus: 

"Luther destroyed the roofs of Babylon ; 
Calvin the walls ; but Socinus the foundations." 

The martyr Michael Servetus, of whom we have hereto- 
fore spoken as burnt under the auspices of John Calvin. 
John Crellius and the able band called the Polones Fratres, 
or Polish brethren. In England, John Biddle, a brave and. 
able man in the time of Charles First and of Cromwell, 
bore the brunt of Nicene enmity till his death in 1622. 
Biddle built a church in London in which were taught 
Unitarian principles. The excellent Thomas Firmin, the 
friend and helper of the persecuted Biddle, whose Christian 
charity and general benevolence captivated all hearts, so> 



1 88 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

that, as the biographers state, "Archbishop Tillotson and 
other eminent prelates were proud of his friendship. " His 
charity was bounded by no sect or party, but extended to 
all. His useful life terminated in 1697. 

The great patriot and poet John Milton; the philosopher 
and astronomer Isaac Newton, whose comprehensive intel- 
lect grasped all truth, so that it was written — 

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid iu night ; 
God said ' Let Newton be,' and all was light." 

To these we can add the eminent moral philosopher, John 
Locke, whose essay on the Human Understanding and the 
Reasonableness of Christianity did so much in their day in 
support of the Christian verities. The worthy Theophilus 
Lindsey, who, out of pure conscientiousness and love of 
truth abandoned a comfortable connexion with the Eng- 
lish church to stand up for an unpopular profession of faith. 
The learned and industrious Nathaniel Lardner, who, as 
a champion of Christianity, has hardly been exceeded, if 
equalled, and on whose labors the candid and ingenious 
Paley, of the English establishment, so steadily relied. Dr. 
Samuel Clarke, a man of thorough erudition and a believer 
in and writer on the Divine Unity, though still a member 
■of the Church of England. Dr. Richard Price was an able 
and excellent man and an earnest advocate of the doctrine 
of the Divine Unity. His two brave pamphlets, in oppo- 
sition to the course of the British ministry, which led to the 
war with the American Colonies, (now the United States,) 
were so highly approved by the corporation of London 
that they voted him their thanks and a gold box. The 
University of Glasgow likewise conferred upon him the 
academical degree of Doctor of Divinity. The great Eng- 
lish war minister, William Pitt, son of the Earl of Chatham, 
was so impressed with Price's abilities on the subject of 
finance that he applied to him to assist in the design of 
liquidating the British national debt. Out of their con- 
ferences grew the adoption of the sinking fund system. 
Such was Dr. Price, but he maintained throughout life the 
pastorate of the Unitarian congregation at Hackney, a 
suburb of London. Dr. Joseph Priestley, the personal 
friend of Price, Benjamin Franklin, and James Watt, was 
an eminent defender of the doctrine of Divine Unity, and, 
like Price, a preacher thereof. He was a very prolific au- 
thor on a great variety of subjects in literature and science. 
As the discover of oxygen his name is immortal. He also 
pursued the study of electricity with great ardor. Priestley 
was one of the manliest and most straightforward of our 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 89 

race. Kings and princes, priests and populace, were to- 
him as the small dust of the balance in comparison with 
sincerity and truth. Deceived, as many distinguished men 
were by the opening aspects of the French Revolution, 
Priestley gave it the endorsement of his heart and voice, 
so that he was complimented by the French with the honor 
of being made a citizen of their republic. This naturally 
brought him a widespread and active enmity in his own 
land, the end of which was that the excited populace of Bir- 
mingham burnt his dwelling-house, library, manuscripts, 
and philosophical apparatus, and put him and his family in 
great personal danger. This was in 1791. The French 
Revolution not progressing after his hopes and expecta- 
tions, he resolved on emigrating to the United States, and, 
in 1794, selected Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, as the 
place of his future residence. He was an earnest political 
friend and supporter of Thomas Jefferson, and died at 
Northumberland in 1804. We here leave our sketch of 
eminent English Unitarians, mentioning further only the 
following additional names of Belsham, Aspland, Carpen- 
ter, Higginson, Tayler, Beard, Southwood Smith, Wellbe- 
loved, Yates, and James Martineau; nay, since he died iu 
England, we will give place to the able East Indian rajah, 
Rammohun Roy, Christian convert and Hindoo reformer, 
whose defence of the Divine Unity, in his controversy with 
the Baptist missionary, Dr. Marshman, of Serampore near- 
Calcutta, is a monument of his effective intellectual force 
and wide learning. He died September, 1833. 

Before simply naming some leading American Unitarians 
of the present century, we give insertion to the opinion of 
the English archbishop, Tillotson, in regard to the con- 
troversial skill and ability of the Unitarians of his day, 
amongst whom must be included some, with more or less 
justice, denominated Socinians. He says: " To do right to 
the writers on that side, I must own that generally they are 
a pattern of the fair way of disputing and debating matters 
of religion, without heat and unseemly reflection upon their 
adversaries. They generally argue matters with that tem- 
per and gravity, and that freedom from passion and trans- 
port, which becomes a serious and weighty argument; and, 
for the most part, they reason closely and clearly, with ex- 
traordinary guard and caution; with great dexterity and 
decency, and yet with smartness and subtlety enough; 
with a very gentle heart and few hard words — virtues to 
be praised wherever they are to be found, yea, even in an. 
enemy, and very worthy of our imitation. ' ' 



190 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

The more prominent Unitarian preachers and teachers 
of this country, deceased and surviving, have been Dr. Gay 
of Hingham, Mass., about 1732, Buckminster, Henry Ware, 
father and son, Greenwood, Peabody, Livermore, Sparks, 
Whitman, Palfrey, Norton, Noyes, Dewey, King, Ellis, 
Gannett, and the equal of any and admired by all, Dr. 
William Ellery Channing, born in Newport, Rhode Island, 
in 1780 and died 1845. His admirable works in divinity 
and general literature have been translated into every im- 
portant European language, and have leavened the century 
in which we live with a spirit of pure devotion, noble aspir- 
ations and justness of judgment which must have enlight- 
ened the intellects and purified the hearts of thousands in 
every walk of life. 

Able and distinguished for many accomplishments as the 
Unitarian clergy are in the main, there are some in the 
connexion who, from overmuch learning, passion for singu- 
larity or something, perhaps, several things else, put them- 
selves and consequently their denomination into positions 
of conflict with well-settled public sentiment and the plainly- 
stated doctrines of the Bible. This may go a good way to 
account for the comparative unpopularity of the whole 
body. Its principles are made to appear to the general eye 
fluctuating, unfixed. People do not feel it judicious or safe 
to become attached to so much fitfulness and uncertainty. 
Whilst nothing like Universalism can ever be heard from 
many Unitarian pulpits, there are others wherein it is 
either openly inculcated or furtively introduced. There are 
also pulpits where even worse and more reckless teachings 
than Universalism are hazarded. The audacity of a second, 
perhaps a third, or other successive probations for the 
unregenerate after death, is occasionally protruded and gar- 
nished with more or less direct imputations on the Divine 
government and character, and glittering scintillations of 
wit and fancy. Sometimes the assumption is boldly made, 
as if it were incontestable, that the happiness and perfec- 
tion of heaven will be a gradual affair, with comparatively 
small beginnings and accretions, according to the virtue 
and industry of each individual struggle. All eternity 
will be insufficient to make the celestial occupant perfect ; 
he will be like the asymptote to a certain curve, always 
approaching but never really meeting perfection. Such 
are some of the liberties taken with the letter and spirit 
of what is taught in the scriptures. 

We have already considered Universalism as a system 
without support from either the Old or New Testament. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 191 

What strength it has in the world comes from unwarrant- 
able liberties with the rights of God as the Creator and 
Sovereign of the Universe, for it calls the Creator to its 
bar, and summarily demands to know with what justice 
He can undertake to condemn mankind to everlasting 
wretchedness for the sins, (or peccadilloes, as sometimes 
called), of say sixty, or seventy, or even eighty short years 
on earth? — quite forgetting the essential and inseparable 
connexion established between obedience and happiness 
on the one hand, and between disobedience, or sin, and 
alienation from God, on the other ; and keeping out of 
sight the measures that have been adopted for the recovery 
of sinners from the error of their ways, and for putting 
them into the road of salvation and safety, they argue on 
the basis of a natural right to disobey and of a title to be 
made forever happy without any sustained exertion towards 
that end. Hard thoughts of God are entertained as if He 
were an unfeeling despot managing the affairs of His 
universe on other principles than those of justice and 
equity. 

Of the same general character are the deductions of the 
astounding Second Probation advocates. In a sermon 
preached by a Unitarian minister of acknowledged intellect 
and ability, in behalf of a second probation, God's character 
for mercy was sharply arraigned, that is, if there is to be no 
second probation. Instead of making appeal to the Bible on a 
subject of paramount interest, no such reference was made, 
but the speaker sought solace from the opinions of avowed 
Universalists and the disciples of the vision-seer of Sweden. 
Thus the Second Probation is pretty distinctly promulgated 
as another gospel ior the comfort of those who do not care 
to take the trouble to avail themselves of the first. The 
Apostle Paul's ideas about "another gospel" are pretty 
plainly developed in his first chapter to the Galatians, 
together with the disposition he would make of the preachers 
thereof. Where the Second Probationists propose to locate 
the scene of the second test has not been named; so whether 
on this earth, or the moon, or one of the other planets, or 
some great comet, is more than has yet been made known. 
As the second probation will necessarily be a supersedure 
of the unfavorable sentences at the judgment-seat of Christ, 
there should be some mention made of the court that will 
issue arrests of judgment in the numerous cases that will 
arise. It is hardly likely that this earth will be the scene, 
because it will be appropriated for the residence of the 
redeemed with Christ for their ruler and king. Then 



192 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

nothing has been prognosticated as to the manner in which 
the second trial is to be commenced. Whether through the 
intervention of a second father and mother, or by some 
other means of reproduction, we are not informed. Other 
considerations present themselves; among which will be 
the necessity for provision for the vast assemblage of re- 
embodied beings all at once in the new home. At all 
events, one cannot but mark some kinship between the 
ideas of the Second Probationists and the notions of old 
Origen, the father of Restorationism. And if the second 
probation should fail, it is not unlikely that a third and 
even a fourth might be proposed. Can any church organ- 
ization afford to give countenance to such extravagances ? 
The other assumption of a gradual acquirement of holi- 
ness and consequent happiness in heaven, carries some dis- 
couragement in itself, besides being wholly foreign to the 
Bible. It seems also to involve some imputation on both 
the power and gracious goodness of God. If God's power 
was competent to change instantaneously the spirit of the 
son of Kish, so as to "give him another heart and turn 
him into another man," why should we think that the 
Divine arm would be restrained from at once conferring 
on Christ's redeemed ones a full measure of perfection? 
"Blessed," said Christ, "are they that hunger and thirst 
after righteousness, for they shall be filled." " Filled " is- 
Christ's word ; not partially, but "filled." Such is God's, 
response to the desire for righteousness. The aged Paul 
rejoiced in the hope of the "crown of righteousness which 
the Lord, the righteous judge, would give him at that 
day" — yes, "at that day," — not delaying the ineffable 
gift till some indefinitely or even infinitely-distant day in 
the later ages of eternity. What, too, does Paul mean by 
" the perfecting of the saints " and coming " in the unity 
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a 
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ " ? So Christ himself, the captain of our salvation, 
was made perfect through sufferings, by which he was forth- 
with exalted to the incomparable honor and dignity of a 
seat at God's right hand. There was no delay, but a 
prompt, immediate, and full reward. So with Christ's 
faithful followers ; the}- will find in God's presence not 
partial or far-off blessedness, but ' ' fulness of joy ; and at 
His right hand pleasures for evermore." 



After thus looking into the opinions of the leading 
churches relative to their theology and soteriology, we 






NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 93 

will briefly review the testimonies of God's written word 
in the Old and New Testaments, bespeaking the reader's 
patience with "the line upon- line, the precept upon pre- 
cept ' ' he may meet in the remainder of the course before 
us. 

If the Supreme Being, as Nicenists represent, consisted 
from everlasting of three separate intelligences, having the 
common basis of one and the same essence or nature, then 
if He saw fit to reveal Himself to any extent to His creatures 
upon the earth, He would do so either truthfully or untruth- 
fully. That He should reveal Himself untruthfully is not 
to be admitted, for being infinite in power and majesty and 
in every way Lord of the Universe and all it contains, no 
motive is conceivable why He should be ashamed or afraid 
to be known in any but His real character. If, on the one 
hand, He were a Unit, undivided and perfect in His single 
self, why should He represent Himself as a Triple Being? 
On the other hand, if He really existed in a tripartite form, 
why aver Himself strictly a Unit in language inappropriate 
to describe any other than a unit? No sufficient reason 
appears why an erroneous, not to say deceptive, representa- 
tion should be made; besides which, the character of the 
Supreme for simple veracity is not to go unconsidered. 

We learn from the Bible that when God commissioned 
Moses to communicate His will to the Israelitish people in 
Kgypt, Moses desired to know by what name he should 
designate the sender of the commission he bore. God 
chose a title for Himself of, verbally, the simplest, yet, in 
fact, the most comprehensive and sublime. ' ' I am that 
I am" was the awful name, implying self-existent Unity. 
Now, because men, believing God, taking Him entirely at 
His word, and deeply impressed thereby, have testified to 
the world this Self-existent Unity, they have been vilified, 
abused, persecuted, maltreated, imprisoned, tortured, and 
burnt alive at the stake by those who have thereby virtually 
proclaimed that God meant not to say ' ' I am that I am, ' ' 
but "We are what we are," words just as easy of utterance 
and incomparably more befitting, if the Trinity were true, 
than the designation really chosen by the Supreme. At 
the time Moses was commanded to communicate with the 
people of Israel, the plural sentence, ' ' We are what we are, ' ' 
would have been as thoroughly acceptable to that people 
as the unitarian designation, for (Exod. 6: 3) their educa- 
tion in divine things was but commencing. 

What then must be our conclusion? What can it be 
other than that God described Himself as the self-existent 
13 



194 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Eternal One, with no tinge of plurality in His constitution 
or manner of being? Nor was this all. It was no mere 
passing or temporary title for that occasion only, but was 
ordained to be God's "name forever and His memorial 
unto all generations ;" — why not in our generation? 

When the law was formally delivered in Deuteronomy, 
6:4, the same strict unity was again enjoined — "Hear, O 
Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord." And when the 
prophet Zechariah, looking down the long vista of the ages 
to come, saw the day when " the Lord shall be King over 
all the earth, ' ' he added, ' ' in that day shall there be One 
Lord and His name One." What Christ and his Apostles 
so abundantly said to the same effect we have already seen. 
Where then is triplicity as belonging to, or descriptive of, 
the Divine personality? Where that invention of Theoph- 
ilus of Antioch, who in the word "Trinity" sought to 
gratify the vitiated conceits of those who gravitated to a 
belief in more divinities than one, yet hoped to placate 
the Monarchian majority — an invention, as remarks Dr. 
MacLaine in his Chronological Tables to Mosheim's Eccle- 
siastical History, for which " the Christian church is very 
little indebted to Theophilus, for it has produced heresies 
of the worst kind." 

What we have further to say on this greatest of all sub- 
jects, and which is only allowable because the divine 
records invite to a true knowledge of the Most High, will 
be mainly a retrospect of a learned essay written in sup- 
port of the doctrine of the Trinity. It can be found in 
Addis and Arnold's "Catholic Dictionary," published in 
New York, and which commends itself by its spirit of 
general candor and fairness. 

The article explains the Nicene method of constructing 
the doctrine of the Trinity. This is effected by means of 
two propositions, the first of which reads: "The absolute 
unity of God was and is the great article of Israel's faith, 
and it is asserted with equal emphasis throughout the New 
Testament." The second proposition says, " If, then, the 
New Testament teaches the real, distinct and divine person- 
ality of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, this comes to teach- 
ing the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity." The meaning 
of all which is that the first proposition declares the Bible 
testimony to what is called " the absolute unity of God " ; 
the second proposition takes for granted (for it does not 
demonstrate) God's threefoldness, or existence in three sepa- 
rate and distinct persons; therefore, both propositions, taken 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 195 

together, teach God's simultaneous unity and triplicity, or 
that He is both three in one and one in three. Q. E. D. 

But a little examination will suffice to show some faulty 
logic in this very compendious method of construction. 
The first proposition speaks (but not with special accuracy 
of language) of the " absolute unity of God," by which it 
does not mean, as it ought, God's singleness of person, but 
sameness of nature in several persons, which certainly was 
not " Israel's faith," nor the doctrine of Christ or of his 
apostles, or of the New Testament in any part of it. What 
the first proposition means by the " unity of God" differs 
nothing in principle from the Hindoo idea of the same 
"unity," as has been shown in the foregoing pages. 
Mark's gospel, chap. 12: 28 to 34, proves incontestably the 
identity of "Israel's faith" with Christ's doctrine, which 
ever was and is and will be that there is "One God and 
none other but he," viz., a being absolutely singular 
or sole both in person and nature; "&e, and none other 
but he. ' ' 

The second proposition is not assertive like the first; but 
merely hypothetical. " If, " it says, ' ' the New Testament 
does so and so, why, then, this comes to so and so. ' ' Thus 
no fact is alleged. Perhaps, it is intended that the follow- 
ing part of the article shall prove that ' ' the New Testament 
teaches the real, distinct, and divine personality of the 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost," — jointly and severally, we 
presume to be meant. Let us see. 

The Catholic Dictionary declares that the doctrine of the 
Trinity ' ' appears in the New and has its roots in the Old 
Testament. ' ' Where are the appearances located, and where 
the roots? The dictionary does not feed the hunger it 
arouses. It only tells us that ' ' Catholics have naturally 
been prepared to find traces" as in Genesis, 1 : 26 and 3: 22, 
but it seems that the renowned French Jesuit, Denis Petau, 
or Petavius, will not acknowledge those texts to be " traces " 
at all, nor will he permit the plural noun Elohim (the He- 
brew name for God) to have ' ' any allusion to a plurality of 
Divine persons. " " The word for a human master is often 
plural, and the same plural form of the word " God " with 
a singular verb is used of the idol Dagon in Judges, 16: 23." 
And then, says the Dictionary, "To sum up, Here and 
there the Old Testament clearly and by itself indicates por- 
tions of the doctrine; in more, the New Testament helps us 
to discover certain ox probable traces of it in the Old, while 
it is generally held by Catholic divines that some favored 
saints of the old law had a knowledge, more or less com- 



I96 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

plete, of the mystery." And this is spoken, be it under- 
stood, of two books announced to mankind as revelations^ 
and particularly of the principal article to be revealed. 
Most of us have heard of a something very like this argu- 
ment of the Dictionary, on which, if you put your finger, 
you will not find it there. 

Concerning the doctrine of Christ's pre-existence, or ex- 
istence before his birth of the Virgin Mary, the Catholic 
Dictionary says: " Nowhere is Christ's pre-existence, much 
less his eternal generation, in terms," but " Christ in the 
synoptic gospels claims attributes which can hardly be less 
than divine." (Matthew, 11:27.) Whoever will refer to this 
text in its place will instantly perceive that if the possession 
of the knowledge Christ speaks of render him divine, so 
also will the same knowledge render divine the person to 
whom Christ shall reveal it. To as little, or even less pur- 
pose, are quotations made from Paul's earlier epistles to 
prove Christ's pre-existence. Christ is quoted as " the 
image of God." If he is the image of God, as all true 
Christians cheerfully admit, then he is not the God whose 
image he is. The picture of a man is not, assuredly, the 
man himself. Allusion is made in the Dictionary to the 
controverted text in Romans 9: 5, but it is fair and candid. 
To claim this text as a proof of Christ's deity lacks little 
or nothing of the phrenetic. There is scarcely a text in the 
Bible of plainer import. Paul is writing of his Israelitish 
kinsmen, whose were the law and its remarkable and glori- 
ous accompaniments; whose were the fathers, and of whom, 
by natural descent, was Christ; God, blessed for ever, tran- 
scending all. The passage is a rhetorical climax, much 
in vogue with St. Paul. For other instances of the climax, 
where God's supremacy is maintained, see the conclusion 
of 1st Cor., chap. 3; also 1st Cor., n: 3. With respect to 
Romans, 9: 5, the revisers, in producing the new version, 
acted unmeritoriously. The American committee trans- 
lates almost precisely like the Catholic Dictionary, "He 
who is overall, God, be blessed forever." The English 
committee did worse in going farther away from Paul's 
meaning than even the Old Version. They could not afford 
to lose the old prop to a weakening cause, so they concluded 
to leave it stiffer than they found it. The genuine truth is 
that the revisers need a good deal of revising. 

The Dictionary quotes, "Christ, the beginning of the 
creation of God." Very well, then; if a part of the creation, 
Christ is not the creator. As to the so-called baptismal 
formula in Matthew, 28: 19, the Dictionary claims it, with- 



XAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 197 

■out proof, as a support to the Trinity ; quoting to the same 
ineffectual purpose the benediction in 2d Cor., 13: 13, but 
shuns Acts, 5: 31 and 32, and 1st Cor., 12: 4, 5, and 6 — texts 
more definite and instructive. The text John, 10: 30, is 
quoted as if the explanatory texts in John, 17: 11 and 21, 
were not in the Bible. 

Passing over to the Apostolic fathers, the Dictionary 
acknowledges that the " doctrine of the Trinity is neither 
expanded nor reduced to system ' ' by them. ' ' Nor is the 
Logos used as a personal name. ' ' . Going farther off, how- 
ever, than the era of Christ and his Apostles "to the middle 
of the second century, we find much fuller statements and 
an approach (an approach only) to a definite theology of the 
three divine persons. ' ' Still, there was yet no such word 
as ' ' Trinity. ' ' It was about one hundred and eighty years 
after Christ that Theophilus of Antioch hammered out this 
designation for the rising dogma, before then a something 
without a name. The Dictionary goes on to admit that 
the fathers who lived between the Apostolic fathers (viz. , 
Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hennas, Ignatius, Polycarp, 
Justin Martyr, Papias, Irenseus, Origen, Tertullian, Lac- 
tantius, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Novatian, 
Dionysius of Rome, Dionysius of Alexandria, &c.)and the 
period of the Council of Nice ' ' call the Father the God, or 
God absolutely; the Son is only, or simply, called God.'' 
Tertullian speaks of the Father as ' ' ipse deus, ' ' that is, 
God in Himself, the self-existent God. Of the Son he says 
" hactenus dens, quatenus ex ipsius Dei substantia^ that is, 
that the Son is God in so far as he is derived from the sub- 
stance of the original God; — leaving it to be afterwards 
determined whether Christ was or was not to any extent so 
derived. 

The Dictionary continues : ' ' But in two ways the teaching 
■of many of the Fathers who lived before the Council of 
Nice was imperfect and inconsistent with itself. Their 
belief led them to speak as if the nature of the Son was 
inferior to that of the Father. Thus Justin describes the 
Word as a 'God under the maker of the Universe; a God 
different in number from the God who made all.' Clement 
•of Alexandria attributes to the Son a 'nature most near to 
the sole Almighty ' Father. Tertullian declares that the 
whole substance of the divinity is in the Father, ' a por- 
tion of it only in the Son. ' Origen says that the Son is 
worthy of a ' secondary honor, ' after the God of all ; that 
he is ' different in essence from the Father. ' Many of 
these fathers affirm that the generation of the Son happened 



198 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

in time; for instance, Justin, Tatian, Hippolytus, Tertul- 
lian, Novatian, and L,actantius. On the other hand, Irenaeus 
maintained Christ's eternal generation. So also thought 
Dionysius, bishop of Rome, in the middle of the third cen- 
tury. The eternity of the Sonship was not defined in the 
Nicsean creed, and, for many years after 325 a few even of 
the orthodox continued to deny it. 

Some members of the council of Nice who were orthodox 
on the divinity of the Son feared to call the Holy Ghost 
'God,' partly because they doubted whether scripture 
justified such a use of language; partly because they feared 
seeming to confess three Gods. St. Gregory of Nazianzen 
believed that the divinity of the Holy Ghost was to be 
taught gradually, with great caution, and not to all, and 
he defended St. Basil the Great for his prudent reserve on 
that point. Basil believed that the Holy Ghost was God, 
but did not at the same time say so openly in set terms. 
- The true divinity of the third person was asserted at the 
council of Alexandria in the year 362 ; by two synods at 
Rome under Pope Damasus, and finally by the council of 
Constantinople in 381, in a decree accepted by the whole 
church. ' 

The fourth Lateran council, held at Rome in the year 
1215 after Christ, defines the distinction of the persons 
. from each other, and the absolute identity of each with the 
one ' individual essence ' of God. The council speaks of 
the incarnation as effected ' by the whole Trinity in com- 
mon. ' Of course the second person only was incarnate, 
but all works exterior to the Trinity itself are effected by 
the three persons. They are distinct only in virtue of their 
relations to each other. The Father alone generates; the 
Father and the Son alone breathe the Holy Ghost. 

All Catholic theologians are agreed that the existence 
of the Trinity cannot be proved by reason, and although 
they add that the doctrine is above reason, but not contrary 
to it, still Billuart, at least, admits that we cannot prove 
' positively and evidently ' that the doctrine does not 
involve contradiction. The obvious objection presents 
itself that we cannot believe what is absolutely unintel- 
ligible; and again it might be said that a revelation that 
tells us nothing of God's character brings us no closer to 
Him ; in no way affects our own life ; is not a revelation 
at all." 

The same dictionary article infimates that if the purpose 
is that the worship of the Son must be maintained, it is 
necessary to have a Trinity, or else "fall back into 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 1 99 

polytheism " — a pretty desperate alternative, which may, 
however, be escaped altogether by not maintaining the 
forbidden worship. 

Thus far we have copied from the singularly honest title 
on the Trinity in the Catholic Dictionary. At least two 
important conclusions can be drawn from it. The first is 
that men, both before and after the council of Nice, who 
were, we may say, totally ignorant of the commonest prin- 
ciples of natural philosophy and of the composition of the 
most ordinary substances with which they were surrounded, 
the rocks, the earths, the elements, and other forms of 
matter — undertook to define and fix the essence, substance 
and structure, respectively, of the Invisible, Immaterial 
and Infinite God, of Christ and of the Holy Ghost. Unable 
to analyze a drop of the blood in their own veins, or to tell 
the components of a single pebble lying at their feet, they 
hesitated not to dissect God and Christ, and to pretend 
acquaintance with the most abstruse and secret mysteries; 
with the interior of the Divine organization ; and even to 
describe and limit in each the workings of this or that 
divine person. That their several guesses should have 
differed among themselves is no more than might be ex- 
pected so long as any freedom of thought and expression 
was permitted, and it was only when the differences between 
these conjectures betrayed their mutual destruction that im- 
perial political authority stepped in and by such restraints 
as privation of office, confiscation of goods, imprisonment, 
exile, and other severe penalties, compelled universal una- 
nimity. Constantine' s decree put a quietus upon conflicting 
speculations, and disgracefully dominates nineteen-twen- 
tieths of the Christian world down to the present hour. 

The second important conclusion is drawn from the sur- 
vey of the movement of patristic thought respecting celestial 
beings. Monotheism, monarchianism, unitarianism, was 
in full vogue during the lifetime of Christ and of his 
apostles, and so continued to prevail until gradually en- 
croached upon by the mixing up of Gentile speculations 
with Bible truth, which ended in such an almost total 
eclipse of the pure light and incoming of the dark ages, as 
to justify the sentiment of the English bishop that "the 
decision of the council of Nice was the greatest misfortune 
that ever befel the Christian world. ' ' 

The object of these papers has been utility — practical 
utility — i. <?., in furnishing members of a church with means 
for scrutinizing the principles of their sect by a comparison 
with the religion of Moses and the Lamb; of Moses as 



200 NAZARETH AGAINST NICK. 

preliminary, and of the Lamb as completive. Leaving, 
undiscussed, minute particulars, we have considered only 
the great points in theology and soteriology. They are 
expressed, not in language of human construction and 
arrangement, but in terms dictated by the Holy Ghost, 
thus: "There is one God and one Mediator between God 
and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom 
for all. ' ' One only God, and one only Mediator and Saviour, 
and that mediator and saviour, a man; capable of redeem- 
ing from the bondage of sin and sinfulness in this world, 
and of furnishing an acquittance from the penalty of former 
disobedience in the next. A complete Saviour to the utter- 
most to all that come unto God by him. 

If God is one, and the one Mediator stands between God 
and men, then the mediator is not that one and only God. 
He is some other being. He is not a Godman, for no such 
being ever had or will have existence; and all that ever has 
been or ever will be said about such is simply mythical. 
The mediator is man; so designed and so constituted by 
God his Father; born of a woman; born under the law; 
subject to temptation; therefore potentially not beyond lia- 
bility to sin, for if not so liable, at least potentially, he 
would be no suitable exemplar for fallible man; capable of 
obedience and improvement even to perfection under the 
discipline of temptation, trial and suffering; actually sin- 
less, because continually remembering the written divine 
law and prayerfully seeking ever fresh supplies of the Holy 
Spirit, which God gave him not by measure; whose human 
body he himself offered on the cross as a sacrifice for sins 
which God accepted; and lastly, with an expectation, 
sure to be fulfilled, of being the world's judge, and after 
that the perpetual High Priest and King over the Israel of 
God on the restituted earth purged of all iniquity, sorrow 
and pain. — Daniel, 7: 13 and 14. 

But now, as to the way of salvation ? The Bible is not 
lacking of means to answer the inquiry. It prescribes One 
God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
and in all whose faces are heavenward ; One Lord Jesus 
Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all; One pure faith, 
the common profession of all; One baptism following after 
faith, the participation and joy of all ; One Spirit, with the 
bond of peace, uniting all in an unyielding righteousness 
of life. Herein will salvation be found. 

Throughout all is the prevailing idea of unity. Tripli- 
city, Tritheism, or Trinity, gets neither hint nor " trace." 
Equally absent are dogmas about eternal generation, pre- 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 201 

■existence, incarnation, two natures in the person of a single 
being, and the mass of dependent errors from time to time 
elaborated and fastened upon the enslaved minds and con- 
fused consciences of men. Whether the world's thought is 
•or is not being lifted up to a better conception of the truth, 
with a yearning for reunion upon a common basis, is more 
than we can dare an attempt to determine; yet such is 
■our very earnest hope. Of heresies and schisms the so- 
called Christian world should be sick to nauseation. The 
case at present is that of a house wofully divided against 
itself. Every man's bounden duty is, then, for himself to 
know the truth, that he may be free, and to extend that truth 
whenever and wherever he can. Ever}' man is rot only his 
own but his brother's keeper. Remember that those who 
will sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to 
everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt. They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of 
the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as 
the stars for ever and ever. 

Modern astronomy, under the guidance of what we every- 
where learn of the creative energy and beneficence of the 
Most High, conducts to the conclusion that the immeasur- 
able heavens are studded with worlds so many as to baffle 
numeration; stocked, in the main, with countless intelli- 
gent and morally-responsible inhabitants. God, the Uni- 
versal Creator and Preserver, it is not to be doubted, is 
recognized as such everywhere; subordinate to whom it is 
probable there is a visible representative in each of most, 
or very many orbs, of His perfections, answering to Christ, 
the Son of Man, the future Lord of this whole regenerated 
sphere. The glories of this restituted globe, there is every 
just reason to suppose, will be incomparably greater than 
the blooming beauties and magnificence of the Paradise 
of Eden. This state, never diminishing in glory, with no 
breath of malady, visitation of sorrow, or worm of decay, 
will be for ever and ever. There perfection will reign, for 
the Lord God shall be Supreme Monarch over all the earth. 
He shall be One and His name ONE ! — Zechariah, 14: 9. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 



BRIEF EXPLANATIONS OF TEXTS SOMETIMES 
MISUNDERSTOOD. 

Genesis, i : 26. 

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," &c. 

This is a familiar mode of expression, (so Mark, 1:24,) 
having no special significance, and furnishing no ground 
for supposing a plural deity. In the next verse it is said, 
' ' So God created man in His own image ; in the image of 
God created He him." Here the singular number is used 
in close connexion with the name of God. In Gen., 3 : 22, 
God said : "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to 
know good and evil. ' ' In these cases God most probably 
speaks as belonging to and representing the invisible 
spiritual realm, all whose inhabitants are endowed with 
the knowledge of good and evil. In this incidental way 
the Word of God early taught the existence of a world 
superior to this, yet invisible to man. Whoever may 
wish to know the number of persons in the Deity can find 
direct instruction on that point in Deut, 6:4; Deut., 4 : 35 
and 39 ; Deut, 32 : 12 and 39 ; Isaiah, 44 : 8, and 45 : 5 and 
6 ; Mark, 12 : 32. 

Isaiah, 9 : 6. 

The proper rendering of this verse will be found at page 
149, copied from Bishop Lowth's Translation of Isaiah. 
Instead of "The Everlasting Father," Lowth more fitly 
reads, ' ' Father of the Everlasting Age, ' ' meaning the age 
beyond the grave, a highly appropriate designation for 
Christ. The name "Mighty God," by which he "shall 
be called," does not indicate Christ's deity, but the para- 
mount distinction of "Mighty Ruler" in the future king- 
dom and government, according to the Hebrew idiom. 
(See Exodus, 22:28; Psalms, 82:1 and 6.) Moses was 
made a "God to Pharaoh," and to Aaron "instead of 
God." That this title has no reference to any deity in 
Christ is plain from his being "a child born" and "a 
son given" — words not compatible with deity. Besides 
which, the subject of the prophecy is to sit "upon the 
throne of David, " through the " zeal of Jehovah of hosts," 
the "only true God." (See also 2d Kings, 19: 31, and 
Isaiah, 37 : 32.) 

Micah, 5 .• 2. 

"Whose goings forth have been from of old, from ever- 
lasting. ' ' 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 203 

A thoroughly unjustifiable perversion is sometimes com- 
mitted in respect to this portion of scripture, in intimating 
that it teaches the pre-existence of Christ and his past- 
eternal deity. It would be difficult to find a clearer 
instance of swallowing a theological camel. The text 
simply and really shows that it had been the divine pur- 
pose from everlasting to cause the Messiah to be born 
in Bethlehem, as David was, and go forth from thence. 
The subject of the prophecy was thereafter to " stand and 
rule in the strength of Jehovah and in the majesty of the 
name of Jehovah his God, for he (the subject of prophecy) 
shall be great unto the ends of the earth. ' ' That Jehovah 
is the Messiah's God, demonstrates that the Messiah him- 
self is not God. As to who Messiah's God is, see further, 
John, 20 : 17 and Ephes., i : 17. In Matth., 25 : 34 Christ's 
kingdom is said to have been "prepared from the founda- 
tion of the world." Also Ephes., 1 : 4 and 1st Peter, 1 : 20, 
to the same effect as the text in Micah, and giving no tittle 
of countenance to Christ's alleged pre-existence or deity. 
The pre-existence had place only in the fore-entertained 
purpose of the Most High. 

Matthew, 1 : 23. 

"They shall call his name Emmanuel, which being 
interpreted is, God with us. ' ' 

With all due respect to the old translators and the late 
revisers, the name Emmanuel, properly interpreted, is, not 
1 ' God with us, ' ' but God is with us, as may be seen on 
reference to Isaiah, 8 : 10. Everybody having any acquain- 
tance with the scriptures knows the Hebrew habit of desig- 
nating persons and places from some striking circumstance 
in the history of each. Thus came Adam, Eve, Abra- 
ham, Israel, Ichabod, &c, by their names. When Jacob 
dreamed at a place called Euz (Gen., 28 : 15) of the ladder 
reaching from earth to heaven, and received God's assur- 
rance, ' ' I am with thee and will keep thee in all places 
whither thou goest, ' ' he renamed the place wherein he had 
slept i ' Beth-el, ' ' or the house of God, for he said, surely ' ' the 
Lord is in this place. ' ' The belief, and still better, the assur- 
ance, that God was with them was to the Hebrews, and 
most justly, the greatest possible comfort and support. As 
another instance or two, see Gen., 21 : 20 ; 26 : 24 ; 39 : 2 ; 
39 : 21 and 23; 1st Samuel, 3 : 19 ; Acts, 7 : 9. Turning to 
Isaiah, 7: 14, we note that the supernaturally-born child of 
the virgin of that day was called Immanuel, because the 
miracle of its birth was a token of the then divine presence 



•204 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

and supervision. In like manner, the miraculous birth o f 
the child Jesus naturally induced the application to him 
of the same name, Emmanuel, for it was a distinguished 
token of the continuance of the divine presence yet among 
the Jewish people. In Luke, 7: 16, the presence of Christ 
among them was proof to the Jews that "God had visited 
His people." Nicodemus was convinced that Christ was 
a teacher come from God, because no man could perform 
such miracles as he did except God were with him. So in 
Acts, 10: 38, Peter said God was with Christ. Jesus was, 
therefore, allusively called Emmanuel in this text (though 
the one only place in the New Testament) because his 
advent showed that God had not abandoned His once 
chosen people. Oh, the lamentable blindness and infatua- 
tion of the Jews in that they did not hold to their con- 
victions as expressed in Luke, 7: 16 ! 

John, 10: jo. 

"I and the Father are one." 

This text furnishes an instance of the Divine prescience 
in kindly providing for mankind a Greek original. What 
oetween the baldness of the English translation and Nicene 
partizanship, the general reader's chance to learn the truth 
is none of the best. The unity spoken of in the text is not 
a unity of person or being, but of soul, heart, counsel or 
cause, and it was said in order that those Jews might under- 
stand that any assault on Jesus was equally against God, 
for that the Father and Jesus were united in one and the 
same design and work of human redemption. The correct- 
ness of this will be evident from an examination of the 
nth, 22d, and 23d verses of John 17th, where a unity of 
person or being would make nonsense. The kind of one- 
ness or unity subsisting between God and Christ is the 
same as that prayed for between the individual disciples, 
for, says Christ, ' ' I pray that they may be one, as we are, ' ' 
or ' ' even as we are one. ' ' The unity is "of one heart and 
one soul," as in Acts, 4: 32. If there could be any doubt 
about this, the Greek original would dispel it, for God and 
Christ — and God and Christ and the disciples — are not (^0, 
but (£v) ; not one person, but one thing. Most certainly 
educated preachers and writers are entirely aware of all 
this, yet most of them let the old error continue on and on 
because it makes for their side. Thus also did the revisers. 

John, 8: 58. 
' ' Before Abraham was, I am. ' ' 
This text has been elsewhere explained, but it might be 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 205 

here remarked that the only mistake that has arisen about 
it is due to unfaithful translation of old under King" 
James, and now under Queen Victoria. This is less to be 
excused from the fact that the translators did what was 
right in verses 24 and 28 of this chapter ; in verse 9th of the 
next chapter; in verses 5th, 6th and 8th of the 18th chapter, 
where they inserted the pronoun (he) to make sense, and in 
other places. ' ' He ' ' in this chapter means Christ, and had 
that word been put after ' ' I am ' ' in the 58th verse it would, 
have meant Christ, showing that in the divine counsels 
Jesus had been appointed ' ' the Christ ' ' before Abraham 
existed. In Mark, 13 : 6 and Luke, 21 : 8, the noun ' ' Christ ' ' 
is bodily inserted after "I am" by the old translators. The 
trouble with the Jews was that they refused to identify 
Jesus as the divinely-appointed Messiah or Christ. The 
peaceful Jesus did not suit — they wanted a warlike, con- 
quering hero. 

John, 1 : 6. 

1 ' There was a man sent from God whose name was 
John. ' ' 

If John the Baptist was a subject of prophecy centuries 
before his birth, (Isaiah, 40: 3, and Malachi, 3: 1,) and that 
birth, fairly supernatural, was pre-announced by the angel 
Gabriel, we may be sure that John was an integrant in the 
train of agencies for the redemption of the world. Ordained, 
prepared and sent from God, — constituted a divine com- 
mission for him, similar, though humbly subordinate, to> 
Christ's. We are reminded of James's epistle, which says: 
' ' Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from 
above. ' ' God is not a visible Being, but His visible gifts 
come to us through the media of providence and grace. 

John, 8: 3 1 and 32. 

" Said Jesus to those Jews who believed on him: ' If ye 
continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, 
and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make 
you free.' " 

Christ well knew the craving in every Jewish heart for 
freedom from the Roman yoke. He told them that by 
becoming his disciples they would attain a freedom indeed; 
a freedom they would find to be personal and individual ; a 
freedom from the dominion of sin with its ignominious 
ignorance, darkness and slavery. The soul would be 
emancipated and the effect extend to all the concerns of 
life, so that there might come even in the case of the sub- 
jugated Jew a deliverance from the sense of submission to- 



2o6 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Rome, with a flow of light and liberty overspreading his 
whole being. To all those who in this or any age of the 
world are under the dominion of evil habit and sin, Christ 
addresses himself as forcibly as at first. 

ist Timothy, j : 16. 

' 'And without controversy, great is the mystery of god- 
liness; God was manifest in the flesh," &c, &c. 

This text was formerly much relied on to prove the deity 
of Christ. But since the Revised Version has succumbed 
to the evidence long ago presented (as by Sir Isaac Newton) 
that the word ' ' God ' ' was incorrectly put by the old trans- 
lators for "he who," the text has passed out of controversy, 
and we therefore read "he who was manifest in the flesh." 
Similarly, in Acts, 20:28, the words "church of God" 
should read "church of the Lord," according to the weight 
of the best manuscripts. The ' ' blood ' ' of God, sounds more 
heathenish than scriptural. 

1st Corinthians, 1:23. 

" But we preach Christ crucified; unto the Jews a stum- 
bling block, and unto the Greeks, foolishness." 

"Christ crucified " was a stumbling block to the Jews 
because their hearts were set upon having in their Messiah 
a great national champion, much, perhaps, after the pattern 
of the patriotic Judas Maccabaeus, who should sweep the 
earth of Roman supremacy and repeat the glories of David 
and Solomon. They did not bow to and accept the divine 
purpose of extending spiritual and moral conquests in indi- 
vidual souls, though the miracles of Christ were ample 
notice of where the divine purpose was to be read for cer- 
tain. We fear that the Jews of the present day are victims 
to the same delusions that betrayed their ancestors, for 
they mistake the true purpose of man's education and pro- 
bation on this earth, and regard as a "faith " to be hugged 
to their hearts, expectations absolutely groundless. The 
13th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is scarcely less to 
the purpose for the Jews of this nineteenth century than it 
was for those of the first. 

To the Greeks the cross was ' ' foolishness, ' ' because, 
besides their disbelief of the resurrection, they had no 
appreciation of the inviolability of the divine law and its 
demand for atonement in case of the breach of it. They 
had no just conception of the divine majesty and purity. 
Their mythologies were all dreadfully misleading, and their 
sacrifices and services, for the most part, abominations. 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 207 

They could not perceive any reason why the blood of an 
unoffending benefactor of his race should be shed for the 
atonement of men's sinful souls. They knew nothing of 
the obligations and the philosophy that dwell in the single 
text, Leviticus, 17:11. They had not been initiated into 
the pure yet lofty mysteries inhering in the Mosaic and 
Christian systems. 

Mark, 2: J and Luke, 5 .• 21 ; also Matth. , 9 : 6. 

1 ' Who can forgive sins but God only ? ' ' 

Though put by the unfriendly scribes and Pharisees, this 
question was not without pertinency. The remark to the 
sick man was purposely made by Christ to bring out an 
opportunity to promulge the fact that he was charged with 
power on earth to forgive sins. Nothing could more cer- 
tainly attest the divinity of his commission and messiahship 
than his being entrusted with such a power. But Christ 
faithfully took care to describe the scope of that power ; 
it was "on earth" alone, and so all three of the evangelists 
pointedly record. On Christ's bodily departure from the 
world, after all power concerning his church had been 
given him, the same pardoning power was confided to his 
Apostles. (John, 20 : 23.) The Apostles could either remit 
or retain sins. 

Yet the Pharisees were right in the abstract, as Christ 
indirectly acknowledged, and were wrong only in their 
indisposition to own that the pardoning power had been 
conferred on Jesus. The power of forgiving sins still rests 
finally in God alone ; yet as Sovereign Lord of all He can 
delegate the exercise of that power to whom He will. 

Though the ability to forgive sins was given to Christ 
whilst on earth, it does not appear to be properly his now 
in heaven. He is now, because of his righteousness, man- 
kind's mediator and advocate, (1st John, 2 : 1,) man's High 
Priest, but not his judge. He now stands before the judge 
to act in cases requiring current adjudication. At the 
great day of account Christ's present lofty office will merge 
into the yet loftier office of delegated Universal Judge, 
involving the prerogative of weighing evidence pro and 
con, and making irreversible decisions. And to his faithful 
Apostles, who on earth participated with him in the power 
of forgiving sins, it is promised that they shall, in the day 
when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, 
also sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of 
Israel. (Matth., 19 : 28 ; Luke, 22: 30.) Under God, the 
last judgment will be conducted by men. 



208 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

The sins of mankind are committed against God, the 
Universal Lord. He is the party who has been offended, 
whose laws have been broken, and it is for Him only to» 
forgive ; therefore St. Paul testified at Miletus ' ' repentance 
toward God." It was different in respect to " our Lord 
Jesus Christ," toward whom "faith," as in a divinely 
authorized teacher and atoning Saviour, was enjoined. 
Men are forgiven by God in, or through, "putting on" 
Christ. (Ephes., 4:32; 1st John, 1:9.) In the Lord's 
prayer the Father only is invoked to forgive. When on 
the cross Christ prayed the Father to forgive his murderers. 

In one of Dr. Isaac Watts' s hymns, after glorifying 
Christ's atoning sacrifice, the doctor says: "My Father 
must forgive," — involving an idea very prevalent in Ni- 
cenist preaching and poetry, and also to be found in 
Universalist teachings — that Christ's work, sufferings, and 
death override every other consideration, and compel uni- 
versal redemption. It ought to be remembered, however, 
that there are some sins for which Christ will refuse to- 
offer atonement ; of this kind is blasphemy against the 
Holy Ghost. (Matth., 12 : 32.) So in the Old Testament 
we read that the sins of the house of the High Priest Eli 
were so heinous that God disallowed their being " purged 
with sacrifice or offering forever." It will, therefore, be 
a very perilous mistake to lean upon anything but faith 
resting on submission of heart and obedience of life, for 
pardon and acceptance with God. The case of every indi- 
vidual soul must stand in the full light of the divine 
cognition, for, finally, none can forgive sins but God only ; 
and He is no respecter of persons. (Acts, 17: 31.) 

The text 1st John, 5 : 7, that for successive ages and 
centuries disfigured the common version, has, after many 
a remonstrance against its title to a place in the Word of 
God, been expunged by the late revisers. Its false testi- 
mony has misled mankind and vitiated their sentiments 
beyond computation. 

John, 6: 53. 

"Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink 
his blood, ye have no life in you. ' ' 

This showed that the life he spoke of was not animal 
life but spiritual life, and might well have suggested that 
the "flesh of the Son of man" was something of a spiritual 
nature, as being competent to sustain spiritual life. He 
had told them that he was the true living bread that had 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 200, 

come down from heaven, of which a man might eat and 
not die, but live forever, suggesting; that the bread, the 
eating and the life were all spiritual. 

Verse 56th. " He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my 
blood dwelleth in me and I in him." 

This, again, removes all idea of materiality from Christ's 
intent, for only the spiritual can interchangeably live in the 
spiritual. 

Verse 57. "As the living Father hath sent me, and I 
live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live 
by me." 

This effectually excludes every idea of literal manduca- 
tion, and shows that the "living" referred to was the same 
as that spiritual food which Christ spoke of during his 
temptation in the wilderness, (Matthew 4: 4,) quoted from 
Deut. , 8: 3. Thus, under the Mosaic as well as under the 
Christian dispensation, the command was " not to live by 
bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of the Lord." There was to be a feeding not only 
of the body but of the soul, and soul-feeding was the sub- 
ject-matter of Christ's discourse all through the sixth chap- 
ter of John's Gospel. 

Verse 58th. ' ' This is that bread which came down from 
heaven ; not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead : he 
that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. ' ' 

Christ tells his hearers that the heavenly manna to which 
he alluded had the power of imparting eternal life; it was, 
therefore, not a material substance like the manna of the 
wilderness, which did not preserve from death. Certainly, 
these hints and recommendations ought to have prompted 
his hearers to seek for all the information they could get 
relative to so great a boon, yet most of them, with alienated 
hearts and influenced by other hopes and objects than the 
attainment of eternal life, turned away and with hollow 
pretence intimated that Christ had talked absurdity and 
falsehood. 

To those of them who were less disaffected Christ did at 
length furnish a complete solution, though the solution was 
scarcely other than a repetition of what his previous lan- 
guage had intimated. He told them, then, that it was the 
spirit which gave life, for that his mere material flesh was 
ineffective for any spiritual benefit. The words, or doc- 
trine, he taught, was that whereon they must feed in order 
to attain everlasting life. This was the true manna sent 



2IO NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

down from heaven, of which if men ate they would live 
forever. 

One remark remains: Peter, or Paul or John, might, in- 
deed, as they really did, verbally dispense to their hearers 
the bread of life, the true Christian doctrine, but Christ 
did more. He not only taught the truth, but was a living 
exemplar of it. Not in his teaching only was the heavenly 
truth conveyed, but it was concretely embodied in his 
life, so that he was the very substantial truth and life he 
preached. This perfectly justified his saying, "I am that 
bread of life" — and no wonder, for the favorite "meat" on 
which he fed was "to do the will of Him that sent him 
and to finish his work." 

The Lord's Supper. 

ist Cor., ii : 2j. 

"For I have received of the Lord, that which I also 
delivered unto you. That the Lord Jesus, the same night 
in which he was betrayed, took bread : and when he had 
given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat : this is my 
body which is broken for you : this do in remembrance of 
me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when 
he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in 
my blood : this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance 
of me. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this 
cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." 

This statement was directly made to Paul by the Lord 
Jesus, and not gathered up from among the Christian com- 
munity as were many other facts. It is an indorsement 
from the mouth of Christ of the recitals in the gospels ; a 
circumstance not to be undervalued. 

Christ stated to Paul that he took the bread and brake 
it, and handed it in that way to his disciples, likening the 
broken bread to his body, which, on the morrow, would be 
voluntarily broken, not for himself, but for them. In 
doing this, Christ's object was to premonish them of the 
meaning of his coming crucifixion, viz., that it would be 
a voluntary offering on his part of his body for their sakes. 
So with the wine-cup ; its contents represented the blood 
that on the morrow would be shed upon the cross for them. 

Now there is no element of the Christian faith more to 
be kept in continuous view than Christ's surrender of his 
life's blood for the incalculable benefit of his people. 
Therefore, that so cardinal a fact should not be lost sight 
of, Christ enjoined that the simple ceremony he had just 



NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 211 

enacted should be repeated by his followers in remem- 
brance of him ; simply, in remembrance of him, and not 
for the purpose of an observance scarcely in itself one 
remove from insanity, and in spirit utterly contemptuous 
and defiant of all true religion. 

The necessity for such an offering as the pure and precious 
blood of Christ rested in the insuperable demand of the 
divine law, not one jot or tittle of which can fail of ful- 
filment. Blood as an atonement for sin was the substance 
of it, (Leviticus, 17 : 11,) and the offering must be made by 
■one who had a perfect title to what he offered. Save in 
the case of Christ alone," no member of the human race was 
his or her own proprietor. All bore mortgaged and for- 
feited bodies by reason of their sin. His sinlessness gave 
him absolute title to himself and all that pertained to him. 
His offering was, therefore, acceptable and accepted. His 
blood was everyway appropriate wherewith to sprinkle the 
Mercy-seat, and be a satisfactory propitiation for sins. 

And God, out of His boundless wisdom and goodness, as 
having respect both to the honor in which Christ deserved 
to be held and to the inestimable benefit Christ had wrought 
out for men, caused the New Testament (or Covenant) he 
would make with man to consist in these conditions : That 
in so far as mankind should in deed and truth accept Christ 
as their Law-giver, Master and Lord, and cordially believe 
that God had ratified Christ's work by the attestation of 
raising him from the dead, should mankind receive remis- 
sion of sins and be eligible to eternal life. Thus was the 
cup verily the New Testament in Christ's blood. 

This, then, is the FAITH in Christ — saving faith — having 
for its fruits, 1st, confession of Christ by personal baptism 
into him as the Son of God; 2d, periodical celebration of 
the Lord's Supper; 3d and lastly, a living up to the princi- 
ples of the Christian profession, and perseverance therein 
even unto life's end. 

Thus may the much-needed Second Reformation be 
achieved, and the Christian church brought home to its 
resting place upon the foundation of the Apostles and 
Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. 



The few following texts are submitted as subjects for 
interesting pulpit discourses, viz. : 

1st. The first-commandment-of-all, as mutually under- 
stood and settled upon by Christ and the Jewish scribe in 



212 NAZARETH AGAINST NICE. 

Mark, 12 : 28 to 34 ; — What it is, and to what extent have 
the churches in general mastered their wills and obeyed 
this first commandment ? 

2d. Do the churches in general, and their members indi- 
vidually, comply with the urgent command in Deuteron- 
omy, 6 : 6 to 9 ? 

3d. John, 5 : 19, in connexion with verse 30, relative to 
Christ's inherent personal capabilities. (See, also, Acts, 
1 : 7.) 

4th. Does the Son know all things, so that nothing is 
concealed from him? — Mark, 13: 32. 

5th. Is the Son the full equal of the Father? — John, 
14: 28. 

6th. The scope of Christ's authority and personal pres- 
ence during the period of his earthly ministry — Matthew, 
15 : 24, and John, n : 15. 

7th. At Christ's transfiguration, were the two visitants 
that appeared in glory divine beings or human ? — Luke, 
9 : 30 and 32. 

8th. True worship is the worship of how many objects — 
of one, or more than one? — John, 4: 21 and 23. If only 
one, who is that object? 

9th. Is it not idolatry to worship any but the only true 
God? — Deuteronomy, 4: 35 ; John, 17:3; John, 4: 23. 



ERRATA. 



: 4a— Sixth line from bottom, for Nicence, read Nicene. 

42 — Ninth line from top, for Homoonsion, read Homoonsion. 

46 — Twentieth line from top, for Arclate, read Arelate. 

55 — Third line from bottom, read Christ, He 

83 — Twelfth line from bottom, read authoritatively. 

89 — Fourteenth line from bottom, read or fathers. 
101 — Twelfth line from bottom, read death and descent. 
104 — Twelfth line from bottom, read "burial Into deaths 
136 — Second line from top, for professed, read possessed. 
143 — Twelfth line from bottom, read three eternal. 













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